Study Finds Himalayan Monals Raise Call Pitch Against Traffic and Tourist Noise

• •A study published in the journal Behavioural Processes on 8 July 2025 found Himalayan monals in Uttarakhand shifting their calls to higher frequencies where roads, tourists and pilgrim traffic create noise.
• •Researchers from Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University compared the roadless Madmaheshwar Valley with the road-served, crowded Chopta Valley inside Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary.
• •Passive acoustic monitoring recorded calls without human presence; quantile regression showed noise explained 73.4% of the variation in peak frequency at the 95th quantile.