When an environment is changed, I am able to respond, or change my behavior to that change accordingly. However, some behaviors are that are important for an animal can lead them into a trap. I will use the classic example: The sea turtle. Sea Jellies are an important part of its diet, and the sea turtle has learned to identify shiny round objects in the ocean as food. It often mistakes plastic bags for Jellies and chokes.

Ecological Traps are anthropogenic(human) changes in the environment that interfere with animal behavior. The cue for the behavior is now changed in the environment. Strange as it may be, but my classmates just found a YouTube video with 4.5 million views and is a perfect example of a mate selection trap: A turtle trying to copulate with a Croc(TM). Yes, the plastic sandal. This is bad, not funny! The turtle is not aware that the object is a sandal, all it sees is a dull brown object its size and assumes it is another turtle. This sounds ridiculous, but is common for animals and insects.

The best way to avoid these traps is to be aware of them and reduce them where-ever possible. Even management can fail however. An attempt to increase local duck populations in Minnesota by installing duck boxes(nests) crashed the population. This duck species is a brood parasite. It lays its eggs in another nest to force others to raise it. Normally the ducks hide, however, this season the nests were obviously in boxes and eggs were laid in huge numbers.

I am sorry to say even humans are subject to ecological traps. We have a physiology that loves salts and fats. These things were important to survive, they were extra energy during periods of famine. These periods were thousands of years ago. In today’s society we have surplus foods but the same cravings our ancestors did for fats and salts, so we keep eating although the environment has changed.