The team scattered pine cones beneath 120 trees in noisy and quiet sites, and used a motion-triggered camera to record the animals that took the seeds.
Over three days, several animals visited the sites to take seeds, including mice, chipmunks, squirrels, birds and rabbits. Most significantly though, mice much preferred noisy sites, whereas western scrub jays avoided them altogether.
And this is not some junk story, but rather something published in a top tier peer-reviewed publication.
Between BNSF, and F-&-C, we have a test animal setup in the making. And we see it reported, mice have a preference.