ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1634218
Learning to fear: Predator recognition in giraffes is shaped by evolved sensitivity and ecological experience
Provisionally accepted
Anton Baotic1,2*
Georgine Szipl3- 1Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), Vienna, Austria
- 2Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, Austria
- 3Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education, Grünau im Almtal, Austria
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Predator recognition is essential for prey survival, yet, whether responses are shaped by evolutionary predispositions or by ecological experience remains debated. We tested vigilance responses of fifty-one free-ranging Southern giraffes (Giraffa giraffa) to controlled playbacks of lion roar-grunt sequences in two South African populations: a predator-naïve population in a reserve without lions and a predator-experienced population in a reserve where lions were reintroduced five years ago. Both populations oriented rapidly to lion calls, suggesting that acoustic features of lion vocalizations act as generalized danger cues. However, predator-experienced giraffes sustained vigilance ten times longer (mean ± SD: 513.34 ± 421.34 s, N = 24) compared to predator-naïve giraffes (49.06 ± 46.26 s, N = 27). Vigilance responses during lion playbacks, in general, were higher in the predator-experienced population, whereas responses to control calls did not differ between sites. These findings indicate that while immediate orientation likely reflects evolved sensitivity to acoustically harsh predator cues, the persistence of vigilance is shaped by ecological experience. Our study demonstrates that predator reintroduction can rapidly recalibrate prey risk perception, highlighting the dynamic interplay between evolved predispositions and learning in shaping antipredator responses.
Keywords: giraffe, lion, Predator-Prey Dynamics, Behavioral Ecology, Landscape of fear, bioacoustics, Playback, vigilance
Received: 23 May 2025; Accepted: 13 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Baotic and Szipl. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Anton Baotic, anton.baotic@oeaw.ac.at
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.