Are there exceptions?
In: Biology
It’s not especially complicated. The fire just scares them away. Most animals have an instinctual fear of fire (for what I assume are obvious reasons) so they stay away from it. This is true for animals during the day too, but especially at night, since nocturnal animals prefer the dark, and fire creates light.
And are there exceptions? Sure, there are always exceptions. It always boils down the specific circumstances. A sufficiently motivated animal,(say one that’s starving and can smell the hotdogs you cooked over the campfire earlier) might be motivated enough to overcome their fear and get close to investigate, but for the most part, fire is a really good predator repellent.
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personally if im using campfire to survive predation im building at least four fires in a square and sleeping in the middle
To them it’s magic, our superpower. They know what it it, but that they can’t control it and we can. They also see our other superpower, bipedalism. A talk show, a guy says, ‘I pick up a ball to throw, and my dog looks at me like I’m a god.’
The predators have a stealth build and rely on a sneak attack damage bonus which they don’t get because of the fire. /s
On the plus side : may ward off animal predators.
On the minus side : may attract human predators.
Fire is like a big, scary monster to most animals. It’s bright, noisy, and smells weird. So, they’d rather keep their distance. Plus, the smoke hides your scent, making it harder for them to find you.
But, like any rule, there are exceptions. A really hungry predator might risk it, or bugs might be drawn to the light. So, it’s not foolproof, but it’s a good safety measure.
Wild animals are flammable. They know what to do when there’s a wild fire – run. This is called a Fight or Flight instinct. They know they cannot fight the fire, since they do not posses water, a hose, or truck.
There is a lot of logical sounding explanations here, but as an ecologist I think the reason is simply that most nocturnal animals stay away from highly lit environments, because that would give away their own advantage of being adapted to dark environments. This would make it a lot more probable for them to become prey and give the preyed upon individual more time to react. Hence they avoid it, unless pressed by starvation. In nature, a predator will only attack if it 100% sure it has a clear advantage. Otherwise the energy need would not outweigh the risk of loosing the prey (and hence the energy used) and/or injury (and therefore likely death). So it is plain and simple genetic coding caused by evolutionary pressures.
I have not read any sources or come across any studies on this particular topic, but I have done a bit of field work and research on light pollution and its effect on insect feeding bats. And here it is the above mentioned reason, among a few others.
Yeah, Crabs will (apparently) happily run into a fire zero f*** given.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/19doqxt/selfcooking_crab/](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/19doqxt/selfcooking_crab/)
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