Melo Villareal
No Wild Animal Should Suffer Just For Selfies
- Cute human-animal selfies are at an alarming high.
- A Wildlife Selfie Code was made to protect the animals.
You must have seen this before; you were scrolling through your newsfeed and there are lots of photos and videos of animals of all shapes and sizes. The first one might be of a sloth together with a dog or an anaconda resting on someone’s shoulder and so on.
These selfie craze can be endearing but it’s also creating a negative impact on the animals, according to a report and for the past three years, there has been a surge of 292% of these as reported by World Animal Protection. The report was released on Instagram and stated that over 40% of these selfies feature humans “hugging or inappropriately interacting with a wild animal.”
Since World Animal Day was just celebrated last Oct. 4, a Wildlife Selfie Code was created to promote taking “cruelty-free photos with wild animals” while still allowing tourists to safely interact with them. The Wildlife Selfie Code offers protection for animals of the wild.
Chief executive officer Steve McIvor stated, “A once-in-a-lifetime selfie can mean a lifetime of misery for a wild animal. Tourists care about animals and most aren’t aware of the cruel industry they are fueling,”
“Behind the lens, animals are being snatched from the wild and abused. Some of the species involved are threatened by extinction and many are protected by law. We are calling on relevant governments to enforce the law and travel companies and tourists to abide by them.”
The sad thing about all these is that while it may look harmless on photos, wild animals are being taken from their environment forcefully thus hurting them in the process just so tour operators can make money from photo ops for their guests.
This report was taken from studies from Manaus, Brazil and Puerto Alegria, Peru.
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