Richard Collins: How fear alone can impact birds and lower population growth

Was Roosevelt wrong; have we, in fact, much to fear from fear itself?

Parent birds hearing predator call play-backs produced 53% fewer recruits to the adult breeding population than those hearing non-predator calls.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," declared Franklin Roosevelt during his inaugural address in 1933. It became his most famous utterance.

Eleanor his wife, when asked about its origins, said that Roosevelt had read Henry Thoreau’s work. "Nothing is so much to be feared as fear," was an entry in the great naturalist-philosopher’s journal.