More and more animals are reversing their “clocks” — sleeping all day, staying up all night — all in an effort to avoid humans, according to new research.

While it is no secret that humans tend to disrupt nature, forcing animals to reduce the time they spend looking for food and driving some mammals to remote areas so that contact with humans can be avoided, a team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, discovered that even activities such as camping and hiking are contributing to this clock change.

"It suggests that animals might be playing it safe around people," said Kaitlyn Gaynor, an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study. "We may think that we leave no trace when we're just hiking in the woods, but our mere presence can have lasting consequences."

To reach this conclusion, Gaynor and her team looked at over 75 studies of 62 species on six continents. The data, which included information about lions, otters, coyotes, tigers and wild boar, among others, revealed that human presence drove a 20 percent increase in nighttime activity among the animals.

Calling the findings “surprising,” Marlee Tucker, an ecologist at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany who was not part of the research, explained: “It's a little bit scary. Even if people think that we're not deliberately trying to impact animals, we probably are without knowing it."

Gaynor added that although this “clock change” could really impact animals that don’t adapt well to the darkness, such a shift in behavior could really reduce the encounters between other animals and people.

"Humans can do their thing during the day; wildlife can do their thing at night," she said. Consequently, people would be sharing the planet "with many other species that are just taking the night shift while we're sleeping."

The study is published in the journal Science.