This Farm and Ranch Life article isn’t about how far humans can travel, nor about how far birds fly, fish swim, and mammals migrate.  It was generated by the plethora of recent news reports about dangerous encounters of some visitors to Yellowstone National Park with bison and elk when they became too close to the animals while photographing them.  

The would-be photographers violated the animals’ safety zone, which is better called their flight distance.  Flight-distance is the space which animals, and humans, feel safe from threats, including predators.

When animals become fearful, they undertake flight, fight, or freeze responses.  Flight includes running, swimming, or flying away from a threat to their well-being; fight includes attacks by animals charging visitors at Yellowstone National Park who violate their safety zone, as well as a cow that protects her newborn calf from a farmer who wants to inspect it and put iodine on its navel cord.   

A ground-nesting pheasant that sits motionless on its eggs while a raccoon scouts around the nest illustrates the freeze response.  If the raccoon discovers the nest and pounces, the hen may flee to save its life and perhaps to lay another clutch of eggs.

Humans exhibit similar flight, fight, or freeze responses when they perceive invasions of their personal space, also called their social distance.  The flight response is exemplified by a hiker who runs from an attacking mountain lion, as well as a distressed farmer who avoids meeting with a creditor to whom the farmer owes money.   

The fight response might entail a hiker hurling rocks at an attacking mountain lion, and a distressed farmer filing a legal suit against an adversary.  The freeze response is illustrated when a distressed farmer becomes so emotionally paralyzed that the farmer can’t get out of bed, even though the crops are ready to harvest.  

Flight distances are mostly acquired responses that can change through learning what to fear and how near to allow the threat to approach.  Many animals had little fear of humans until they were hunted; they developed flight distances as they learned to avoid humans stalking them.  Animal parents usually teach their offspring safe flight distances.  

Wolves that gradually developed into dogs as they hung around humans some 45 thousand years ago, as well as sheep, goats, and cattle that were tamed by early farmers some 10 thousand years ago, exemplify the reduction of their flight distances.

People who affiliate with animals regularly, such as people who raise cattle, learn safe flight distances when working with their livestock and are careful around other animals, such as when visiting Yellowstone National Park, because they know the signals of distress when an animal feels unsafe.  Visitors should heed the Park’s recommendation of staying 75 ft. from a bison or elk, and back away if the animal raises its tail, paws the ground, snorts, holds its head highly, or lowers it to charge. 

While hunting prairie chickens near the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge on a blustery October morning about 15 years ago, my son, Jon, his hunting dog, Nugget, and I became tired walking.  We opted to eat lunch in a shady cove, with a few pine trees and ample shrubbery, which lay ahead.  We were hunting private grazing land where the cattle had been rounded up before winter set in.

When we drew about a hundred feet from the cove, a wild-eyed, black bull trotted briskly out of the shrubbery toward us, blowing loudly, head held high.  He was a big guy—weighing about a ton and six feet tall at the shoulder.

He stopped as soon as we stopped, fifty feet apart.  If the bull charged, there were no trees nearby for us to climb.

“All the cattle were supposedly moved to winter quarters,” Jon commented.

“Yeah,” I said, “We don’t want to mess with him.  Let’s stand close together and look tough, so he gets the idea that he’ll have trouble if he charges.  And keep Nugget behind you.”  

We clung together and stomped our feet.  Suddenly, the bull wheeled and trotted toward a hill at a fast clip. “Whew!” 

Proxemics, the study of social distance, including self-disclosure among humans, is taught in most Psychology 101 courses.  

Just as flight distance varies across animals, social distance varies across cultures, Canadian psychologist, Sidney Jourard, found.  He concluded from comparing Americans, French, British, and Puerto Ricans in social settings that Puerto Ricans sat closer together and exhibited greater self-disclosure than the other people.

Social distance among people also varies according to their type of relationships.  For instance, intimate distance (0-18 in.), is typically exhibited by courting and married couples, people who need care, and by loved ones who hug each other, while the social distance among friends, business associates, and strangers successively increases from about a foot with friends to as much as eight feet with strangers. 

Can you detect flight distances in animals and social distance with people? 

Dr. Rosmann, a psychologist with farming in his blood, can be contacted at: mike@agbehavioralhealth.com.