The Hidden Life of Trees

Imagine a familiar situation: you go into the woods with children. Sooner or later they start making noise: they bump into something during games with running about, they spot some animal and joyfully shout to tell everyone about their discovery, or they simply scream from an overflow of feelings. And adults instinctively pull them back: “Quiet! Don’t scream like that!”

But why, exactly? Doesn’t noise made by people interfere with deer and roe deer? Wild animals do like silence—though not because noise hits their sensitive ears too much. If in the treetops there’s a storm, or rain drums on the leaves, then other sounds become inaudible. Deer and roe deer might not hear a stalking wolf or a lynx—which is extremely dangerous. That’s why they prefer places protected from wind and rain, where from far away they can hear the crunch of any snapped twig. But noise made by people doesn’t bother animals, because it doesn’t fill the entire forest at once—it reaches them from a particular spot. In addition, large mammals understand that their worst enemies (the same people, but with hunting gear) haven’t come for prey.

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