One little-examined impact of anthropogenic noise is
that it may draw attention and thus distract animals. While
animals can perceive stimuli in many modalities, they generally
respond to a very narrow range of stimuli because
attention filters out irrelevant information . Attention is finite and limits the total amount of
information that can be processed . Thus animals
become distracted when attention is reallocated to
peripheral and irrelevant perceived stimuli, leaving them
less able to attend to a stimulus important for survival
or reproductive success. Anthropogenic sounds can be
peripheral stimuli. Importantly, as long as stimuli can be
perceived (even those from another modality), attention
may be compromised.