Escape

The mountains are a world where survival of the fittest, or in some cases the luckiest, rules. Each animal has developed it's own ways of preventing, or at least surviving, an attack from predators. Some of these strategies are quite unique.

In order to escape predators, animals need to first be able to recognize danger. We've all seen films showing African lions wandering amidst a herd of wildebeest with the latter paying them little heed. It seems the wildebeest instinctively know when the lions are hungry--and therefore dangerous. This same need is true in the mountains. Predator and prey live amongst themselves and the potential prey must know when it is necessary to escape. Otherwise it spends too much energy trying to escape when it isn't in any danger.

There are many ways that animals defend against attack. Camouflage is one of the most common methods of escaping attack. Most of the animals in the Rockies have ideal colouration to avoid detection in many situations. How many times have you been hiking along, when suddenly the ground beside your feet explodes into a flurry of feathers. As you regain your composure, and ensure that you still have a pulse, you see a grouse alight on a tree nearby. Many animals eyes are more adept at spotting movement than picking out particular shapes.

Killdeer, locally common birds similar to sandpipers (it is actually a plover) use a strategy known as "altruistic behaviour". The female killdeer will pretend to have a broken wing in order to draw the attention of the predator to herself and away from her young or eggs. The idea is to draw them away from the more vulnerable young birds and then, when she feels safe, she can fly away and return to the nest.

Alarm calls are very important to animals that live in groups. Ground squirrels and pikas are well known for this. It's difficult to walk across a large scree slope without a number of pikas alerting the whole area of your intrusion. Surprisingly enough, pikas will only give a warning call from the safety of their rock pile, otherwise the call would alert predators to their presence in an area where they would be quite vulnerable.

Finally, the insect world has developed some of the most fascinating methods of protection. Locally common are small harmless flies that look remarkably similar to wasps. Many people don't know the difference between these "hoverflies" and true wasps. Many predators don't either and so they avoid eating them even though they don't back up their yellow stripes with the wasp's sting.

Many moths have huge spots on their wings which resemble eyes and have been seen to frighten birds away that would have otherwise made a meal out of them. Other insects have developed ways of making themselves look larger and thus too big or too frightening to attack. Toads also use this method. If they see a snake, they puff themselves up to appear almost 50% larger then they do normally--preferably just too big for the snake to handle.

Predators and prey will always develop new and innovative ways in which to either catch their prey of avoid being caught themselves. As we look carefully around us at the local residents, we may be able to spot some of the areas more unique adaptations to survival.