00:03When the world went under lockdown due to COVID-19, animals did the opposite.
00:08At the time, there were reports of what would normally be elusive creatures
00:11making their way into formerly populated areas,
00:14as there were fewer cars and people bustling about.
00:17Which is why biologists all over the world began the COVID-19 BioLogging Initiative,
00:22where they used trackers which were already attached to myriad animal species all over the world,
00:26and they began logging how their movements changed compared to pre-lockdown.
00:30And the results are pretty wild.
00:31Of the more than 2,300 tracked mammals that were part of the study,
00:35some 36% of them moved closer to roads as humanity sheltered in place.
00:39But they weren't just traveling closer to historically human areas either.
00:42They also moved around more as well,
00:44with the study finding that their movement distances over a given 10-day period
00:48were 73% longer during the most extreme lockdown phase.
00:52The researchers add that there was quite a bit of variability species to species,
00:55but attribute that, at least in part, to the lockdown differences between countries as well.
01:00The researchers say this is perhaps the most vivid evidence of the effects of urbanization
01:03on mammal populations all over the world,
01:06showing what they say is a direct cause-and-effect relationship
01:08between human and wild mammal activity around the globe.
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