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Cited by 50Animal Behavior and ReproductionWildlife Ecology and ConservationPrimate Behavior and Ecology

What can vigilance tell us about fear?

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Beauchamp, Guy·2017·Animal Sentience
DOI 10.51291/2377-7478.1203
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Abstract

Animal vigilance is concerned with the monitoring of potential threats caused by predators and conspecifics. Researchers have argued that threats are part of a landscape of fear tracking the level of risk posed by predators and conspecifics. Vigilance, which is expected to vary with the level of risk, could thus be used as a measure of fear. Here, I explore the relationship between vigilance and fear caused by predators and conspecifics. The joint occurrence of vigilance and other physiological responses to fear, such as increased heart rate and stress hormone release, would bolster the idea that vigilance can be a useful marker of fear. While there is some support for a positive relationship between vigilance and physiological correlates of fear, a common theme in much of the empirical research is that vigilance and physiological correlates of fear are often uncoupled. Uncoupling can arise for several reasons. In particular, vigilance is not always a sensitive or specific marker of the internal state of vigilance. Vigilance might occur in animals who do not appear overtly vigilant or conversely an animal might appear vigilant without necessarily maintaining a state of vigilance. Animals in a fearful state might also be unable to allocate time to vigilance if they are too hungry. Vigilant animals might not show physiological responses associated with fear if they become desensitized to threats. For all these reasons, inferring fear from vigilance is fraught with ambiguity.

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  • The novelty of covering the main window and associated changes such as illumination may have stimulated inspection by the penguins.

    “However, it is important to note that vigilance is not always an indicator of fear and may indicate curiosity and since the main window was randomly covered for five 1-day periods over 2 weeks, the novelty of covering the window and the associated changes such as illumination in the area, may have stimulated inspection [1,51].”

    From Effect of Covering a Visitor Viewing Area Window on the Behaviour of Zoo-Housed Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor) (2020) · cites this paper as [51]

    Section 2, “What is vigilance?” explains that an animal can appear vigilant while attending to something other than a threat, supporting the caution against treating vigilance as an unambiguous sign of fear. It does not address a covered window, changes in illumination, or inspection by penguins, so it does not support the sentence’s specific proposed explanation. (LLM, conf=0.83)

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  • Vigilance is not always an indicator of fear and may indicate curiosity.

    “However, it is important to note that vigilance is not always an indicator of fear and may indicate curiosity and since the main window was randomly covered for five 1-day periods over 2 weeks, the novelty of covering the window and the associated changes such as illumination in the area, may have stimulated inspection [1,51].”

    From Effect of Covering a Visitor Viewing Area Window on the Behaviour of Zoo-Housed Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor) (2020) · cites this paper as [51]

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Authors
Beauchamp, G.
Affiliations
Independent Researcher
Corresponding author
Beauchamp, Guy
ORCID
Beauchamp, Guy
Venue
Animal Sentience
Publisher
WellBeing International Publications
Published
2017-01-01
Volume
2
Issue
15
ISSN
2377-7478 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.51291/2377-7478.1203
OpenAlex
W2737200993
Cited by
50
References
144
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 5
FWCI
4.75
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Animal Sentience (publishedVersion)
  • WBI Studies Repository (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
Keywords
sustained attention, fear, landscape of fear, predation risk, heart rate, stress hormones, hunger, time allocation

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