Bear canisters are seeing increased popularity in areas where bears have become habituated to human presence, and are required in some regions such as Yosemite National Park in the United States.
Habituation has been shown in essentially every species of animal, as well as the large protozoan Stentor coeruleus.
In the 1950s the orienting response was studied systematically by the Russian scientist Evgeny Sokolov, who documented the phenomenon called "habituation", referring to a gradual "familiarity effect" and reduction of the orienting response with repeated stimulus presentations.