Wild animals need wilderness, respect ... and our distance
While it tugs at our heartstrings, humans shouldn't domesticate wild animals. Nature needs them out there, and we need to learn about wilderness, not cuddles with foxes and polar bears.
I’ve been trying to come to understand why I have an issue with videos and stories (though particularly videos) that show how caring human beings take a wild animal (often one that was hurt or abandoned) into their care. Or sometimes it is a wild animal that for some reason comes into the life of a person - forming a close friendship.
These videos are heart-warming, often adorable - what’s not to love when you see human beings getting along with wild animals? When you see wild animals clearly responding to affection, loving ‘their’ human, enjoying their life? Aren’t such videos useful to promote that wild animals love and care just as much as we do? Yes, no doubt, but here’s the thing …
… what humanity really needs is more stories of wilderness and, ideally, more time in wilderness. The videos of human/wild animal friendships may be heartwarming - but they likely give the wrong impression to many. My hope is that people watch more David Attenborough, more National Geographic, more of the wonders of wildlife documentarians capture - in the wild. If people watch the heartwarming clips of foxes and possums, lynx and coons (and there are countless such clips out there) living and frolicking with humans, it’s no big leap to seeing more and more people feeding wild animals, and more people start reaching out their hands to pet a wild animal (of that lunacy, there are, of course, countless clips, too).
Some of these human/wild animal stories are indeed heart-warming, others are everything from head-scratching to disasters waiting to happen. But often these are the stories of individuals and the rare times when an interaction between a person and a wild animal becomes a friendship. But while heart-warming, I should not fail to mention that those wild animals are, most often, no longer free. Humans begin feeding them, and that can go from surprise to dependency to attachment. And then that wild animal is a pet.
Is that in the best interest of any of these formerly wild animals? How is it different from keeping an animal in a zoo, or from a falconer keeping his falcons confined until it’s time to go a-hunting? There’s always exceptions, there’s always reasons, of course. Someone may have found an abandoned young and raised it (see below possum story), or found a wounded animal and took it home to nurse it back to health. And still, I cannot help but feel that wild animals should be wild animals.
Some of these formerly wild animal pets are undoubtedly content in their human surroundings. But that does not remove the fact that they are unable to live their wild nature, that they have been turned into something else by domestication.
Let’s look at some of those stories
Below I’ve collected a random few stories - and I’ve added the numbers of views these clips have amassed on YouTube.
1.2 million views: Raccoons are very clever - and very cute. It’s no surprise that many people fall in love with them by just looking at them. This clip shows a lady with raccoons. She sells little ones, but at least she is very clear in telling people that raccoons will always be raccoons with everything they’ve got.
6.7 million views: With the mother dead, a man raises an opossum. While the initial plan is to release the animal into the wild eventually, it is particularly attached and remains. This wild animal has chosen to be a pet. Wonderful, but 6.7 million people get a super-fluffy idea about possums as pets.
7.5 million views: A man in Kent helped a fox that was in a bad way. The man hopes that the sharing of his friendship with the fox will change people’s minds. Alas, those who continue to hunt foxes (with disguised trail hunting and otherwise) won’t be swayed one bit - and the millions who have watched this clip may get the wrong idea about foxes.
11 million views: A couple in the US owns two bobcats (lynx) and in the video you learn that they’ve always had animals but that they have never had closer bonds than with these two. In this helpful video you’ll also find out they they use the toilet (but haven’t figured out flushing) and sleep with the couple in their bed. Just what everyone always need to know about lynx.
19 million views: Here’s a lovely story about a couple in Russia who adopted a cougar from a petting zoo. This video is proudly featured by an account called Beastly and Beastly has a feature called “Beast Buddies” (where you find many more such stories). In this clip you get to see the couple bathing the cougar, playing ball with the cougar, going for walks with the cougar, watching TV with the cougar … I mean, you can argue that this animal had never been in the wild - but I’d prefer that this couple enjoy their time with their most unusual pet in private - and don’t implicitly tell 19 million viewers that a cougar is one big cuddly pet.
76 million views: A tale from Brazil, where a family lives with seven tigers - it began when the husband came across two ill-treated circus tigers and brought them home. Surely a noble (if insanely dangerous) move. His daughters grew up sharing meals, beds and playtime with the massive predators. They walk them on a leash, they swim with them in the pool … exactly what a tiger’s life is supposed to be like.
81 million views: A couple, according to the YouTube notes, have owned a polar bear from the time it was six weeks old. It initially lived with them in their home “where she played with the family dogs and was bottle fed.” Now this colossus has its own pen and pool and the video shows how the man goes swimming with the polar bear, how he cuddles with him in the grass and kisses him tenderly. This particular polar bear has apparently starred in movies … so I guess all’s well.
The Russian domesticated fox program
While I most certainly don’t like this sixty-year long breeding experiment, it at least makes one thing clear from the start. A wild animal is a wild animal - only if you breed the ‘wild’ out of them over the course of a long, long time, will they become something akin to domesticated dogs and cats.
The experiment in Novosibirsk bred foxes, watched their particular traits, and always selected the tamer/friendlier ones to continue breeding. There are questions and criticisms about the long-running experiment, as you can imagine. For me, it actually exemplifies everything that’s going wrong here.
We should not domesticate wild animals
Whenever possible, when there’s a need, we should employ animal rescue centers and release animals back into the wild as soon as practicable. Yes, animals die and it can be heart-breaking for us to come to terms with the idea that this animal or that animal may not ‘make it’.
But that is what wilderness is, what the circle of life is about, what biodiversity requires of us. It needs us to let nature lead. It needs us to allow for predators to be there and for prey to be there. It needs us to learn to be okay with the sight of a dead animal, with a cadaver that becomes food for many more species.
We need more nature. We need more recovered nature, wild nature. And this can only happen if more people are clear-eyed about nature, and accept and respect its true and utterly necessary wildness.
Cheers,
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