What do animals do during a wildfire?

WHIP OUT the marshmallows and start sharpening sticks? Actually, they do what you would imagine they do – run like hell. Interestingly, however, many of them likely enjoy a bit of a head start. Just as children somehow sense the approaching apocalypse that is the annual back-toschool period, animals pick up subtle cues that wildfire season is in the offing.

Experts aren’t certain precisely what tips them off – a smell, certain sounds, the increased presence of high-school burn-outs wantonly flicking their lighters in the backcountry – but something sets animals on edge and helps them stay ahead of encroaching flames. Small critters, such as mice and moles, may burrow into the ground, which keeps them cool enough not to cook. Other fauna retreat to the safety of streams or rivers, which, of course, don’t burn unless they’re covered in oil. Still, other animals simply haul tail to a part of the forest that’s, you know, not on fire. Geniuses, these beasts.

It all makes perfect sense when you think about it through the lens of Darwinism. ‘Fire is a very natural occurrence,’ says Robert Eaton, a deputy chief of fire management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. ‘It’s a natural process that has happened longer than you and I have been on Earth and it will happen after you and I leave.’ Accordingly, animals ‘ have evolved to deal with this because this is a natural part of their landscapes,’ says veterinarian Stephany Lewis from the California Wildlife Center. ‘So most of them will be able to escape.’ In short, any animal foolish enough to hang around staring at raging fires would be a poor bet to last long enough to reproduce. Anything still crawling, hopping, running, creeping, slithering, scampering, stampeding, or otherwise ambling about the woods likely knows when it’s time to retreat.