That bear or kangaroo might look cute, but it’s a wild animal, not a pet. Wildlife veterinarian Dr Jan Schmidt-Burbach spoke to DW about the need for humans to learn to respect that most basic rule of nature.
In the 1969 movie Kes, a young English teenager called Billy Casper learns the craft of falconry so he can train a wild kestrel. In one scene, he explains why he hates people asking him if his “pet hawk” is tame.
“Is it heck tame! Hawks can’t be tamed,” he says in exasperation. “It’s wild and it’s fierce and it’s not bothered about anybody.”
Young Billy would surely despair at reports this week from Australia of wild kangaroos being fed junk food by tourists. In recent years, there have been regular reports of inappropriate feeding and other ill-advised behavior by tourists around wild animals in various parts of the world.
Dr Jan Schmidt-Burbach is a wildlife veterinarian who has worked for the international non-profit animal welfare organization World Animal Protection for more than 10 years. He spoke to Global Ideas about his concerns with the way in which humans interact with wild animals in the smartphone age.
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Global Ideas: We regularly read stories about difficult interactions between humans and wild animals, often to do with unwise feeding or tourist activity. How big a problem are such interactions?
Dr Jan Schmidt-Burbach: These instances happen really quite regularly and only the ones that are captured on camera make it into the media. These interactions can lead to injuries or diseases and can trigger problematic behavior in animals that then poses a health and safety risk for people. With the feeding, there are some very particular problems. First of all, the food that is provided by people to animals is often not adequate for the wild animals. Wild animals have very specific dietary needs and they are usually quite capable of finding food themselves. What people believe they want to eat often tends to be junk food and can be toxic, poisonous and can cause harm to the animals.
Food with high sugar content has been proven to lead to some form of addiction. So if the animals don’t get that food for a while, they tend to become very aggressive and to not be able to source their normal food as well as before. The whole thing about people feeding them is that it changes the behavior of the animal. With the example of a dolphin or with kangaroos, as soon as you feed them, you make them associate humans with food. So the wild animal that normally stays away from the human will be more likely to go to them. Sometimes this can be really dangerous because people don’t know how to deal with that.
Also, there is the issue of people feeding animals from vehicles. People drive into a national park and they throw some food out of the windows. That is problematic because the animals start associating vehicles with the food. So they tend to gather around the roads more often and that leads to more accidents.
Has the problem gotten worse with the advent of the smartphone and all that goes with that, such as selfie sticks, social media narcissism and so on?
I don’t have any study to back this up but my personal feeling is that it has definitely increased. The intent of people to take selfies or videos of themselves and the attraction of posting a picture with a wild animal on a social media platform has increased the problem. People take all sorts of risks or unnecessary actions to get that picture. That is very problematic. Even aggressive behavior is sometimes felt as being really funny and “cute” so people trigger those behaviors in animals, just to get the footage. People don’t understand anymore that these are wild animals and they don’t understand that they have a natural fear of people that is healthy for both animals and people.
For more read the full of article at The Dw
