Bio-acoustics is a long standing discipline that has allowed to peer into animals’ communication, reproductive behavior, cognitive processes, sociality. Yet, research has mainly focused on animals exerting complex communication (such as primates, birds or cetaceans), so that relatively little is known on the utilization of calls or, vice versa, acoustic cues by less vocal animals, such as ungulates. More recently, a strong interest on animals’ responses to the ambient noise- or soundscape, has been spurred by the lockdown from COVID-19. Humans create a very complex soundscape that likely shapes animals’ interactions with anthropic and non-anthropic environments. Lockdowns represented a sudden alteration of such ‘sensory background’ and much can be investigated on how animals reacted.

Beyond acoustics, other sensory cues – such as light, scent, vibrations- create the more complex ‘sensory scape’ of animals. Terrestrial mammals share land and resources with humans- rather humans subtract habitat and resources to them. Yet, little is known on the overall effect of anthropic environments in terms of animals’ perception and responses.

Increasing our knowledge on these important topics of high conservation concern implies refining the researchers’ ability to acquire input data on the sensory scape. In particular, the COVID 19 lockdown indirectly suggests the value of experimental approaches in wild settings to identify how animals contribute to the sound (sensory-) scape, and how much they are influenced by its variation, especially due to humans. Bio-logging (apposition of technological units to animals) and remote sensing of animals (arrays of technological units deployed in the environment) are of great aid to this purpose by directly measuring sensory variables from animals, or from the context where animals range. The technological state-of-the-art, the forefront of it, and the ecological and conservation questions that could be addressed by such advances will be the topic of this workshop.