Amid lockdown, wild animals roam freely
Print Edition
AS humans retreat into their homes as more and more countries go under coronavirus lockdown, wild animals are slipping cover to explore the empty streets of some of our biggest cities.
Wild boar have descended from the hills around Barcelona while sika deer are nosing their way around the deserted metro stations of Nara, Japan.
Indian social media has gone wild about footage of a stag scampering through Dehradun in the northern city.
Gangs of wild turkeys have been strutting the streets of Oakland, California, while a puma turned up in the center of the Chilean capital Santiago, which is under curfew. “This is the habitat they once had and that we’ve taken away from them,” said Marcelo Giagnoni, the head of Chile’s agricultural and livestock service.
While sightings of dolphins in Venice’s canals turned out to be fanciful, they have been popping up in ports elsewhere in the Mediterranean as emboldened wildlife takes “free rein to wander our cities and towns,” said Romain Julliard, head of research at the French Natural History Museum.
He said that foxes were at the vanguard of the new urban explorers. “They change their behavior very quickly. When a place becomes quiet, they’re straight in there.”
Animals and birds that normally live in urban parks, like sparrows and pigeons are also more likely to venture beyond their usual territories, Julliard said, “freeing a space for other animals.”
While the dawn and dusk choruses have been bringing comfort to many quarantined city dwellers, the museum’s acoustics specialist Jerome Sueur said that doesn’t mean there are more urban birds than before.
It is more that with reduced traffic noise we can hear them better. Some, however, “stop singing when there is noise, so now they are letting themselves go.”
“Animals are shaking off human noise pollution,” Sueur said. The timing could not have been better as they embark on the mating season. With the hunting season suspended in several European countries, this promises to be a spring and possibly a summer of love for the animal kingdom.
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