When wild animals take refuge from predators by straying near people, the illusion of safety can be deadly.
In the wilderness, mid-sized predators like coyotes have learned to fear larger carnivores like wolves and cougars, which will violently attack and kill those smaller carnivores. A new study finds that when those larger predators are around, the smaller ones will try to evade attack by moving into spaces shaped by people. But that ends up putting them at a much higher risk of getting killed — by people, scientists report in the May 19 Science.
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