Selfie Seekers Putting Animals (And Selves) At Risk

Surfing on whale sharks, riding a moose, and mugging with bears, smart phone users do some not-so-smart, dangerous, even cruel things.

By Vicki Croke

Vicki talks with Here&Now’s Jeremy Hobson:

According to Canada’s National Post: “Wildlife authorities in British Columbia said they were on the hunt for the man, who was captured on video leaping out of a boat and onto the moose while his companions laugh from a nearby boat. The video, shot at an unknown time and location, was posted to YouTube.” Video still: Wolftracker TV.

Swimmers using a whale shark as a living surfboard. A boater leaping onto the back of a moose who is trying to swim across a lake. A 22-year-old with a friend who lures a mother manatee and her baby toward the dock so he can cannonball the gentle mammals.

These are among the latest examples of what appears to be a new trend, one in which selfie- and video-seeking humans play a dumb and dangerous game, harassing wild animals in order to gain glory on social media. (Though they sometimes gain a day in court with their own videos working as evidence against them.)

In footage believed to have been shot in Venezuela, two men use a huge whale shark as a living surfboard, as they are pulled along by a speedboat full of people. The scene takes place over a few minutes, and appeared on Facebook in a post that has since been taken down. Whale sharks are the largest fish species and their status is considered “vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Video: vdoobv MY.

Manatees, whale sharks, bison, moose, tigers—it seems no species is safe.

In fact, taking selfies with wild bears became enough of a trend that the U.S. Forest Service’s Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit had to issue a warning against it last year. “We’ve had mobs of people that are actually rushing toward the bears trying to get a ‘selfie’ photo,” Lisa Herron, spokesperson for the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

This week, Canada’s National Post reports that a man whose companions recorded and posted video of him leaping off their boat onto the back of a moose who was trying to swim across a lake may face animal-harassment charges in British Columbia.

In a video posted to YouTube just this past weekend, several people in a boat chase down a moose swimming in a lake in British Columbia. When they draw close enough, one of the men jumps onto the moose. Authorities are trying to identify and locate the man–wildlife harassment is illegal in the province. Though someone on the boat says what he is doing is “awesome,” wildlife officials disagree, telling Canada’s Global News that you can see “fear in the animal’s eyes.” Video: Wolftracker TV.

Depending on where it takes place, and what kind of animal is involved, this kind of activity isn’t just mean, it’s illegal. And though getting that shot may be the motive for tormenting animals to begin with, those videos and pictures themselves, posted on YouTube and other social media, can alert the authorities (as well as motivated animal lovers) and provide clear photographic evidence of the crime.

Take the case of that manatee mother and baby. Manatees are considered endangered and have special protections as marine mammals. The two 22-year-olds, Taylor Blake Martin and Seth Andrew Stephenson, who harassed them were caught by the US Fish and Wildlife Service after they posted the video of their act. They were eventually ordered to serve 175 hours of community service and pay significant fines.

Two men lure a mother manatee and her baby in close to a dock, and one of the men jumps in. They then posted their video on social media in 2012. Both men were eventually ordered to perform community service and to pay hefty fines. Video: newschannel567.

According to the New Times Broward Palm Beach in June of 2014:

The question after viewing so many of these kinds of videos and still photos is: Has the smart phone culture spurred an increase in wildlife harassment, or is it just that all those uploaded videos are making us aware of a problem that’s been around far longer than this latest technology?

Nicole Paquette, vice president of wildlife protection for the Humane Society of the United States, doesn’t think we’ll be able to answer that definitively. But she believes there may be a couple of factors contributing to the current situation.

“Certainly due to social media you see it a lot more often,” she says. And she suspects a cultural shift has taken place because of animal-centered reality shows. “We’ve certainly been seeing so many more reality TV shows that have close encounters with dangerous wild animals. You know you see them wrestling alligators, you see them interacting with some of our native carnivores. And this does several things. One, it sends the wrong message that it is OK to do that. But it’s also really detrimental to the animals because in the event that something does happen to that individual, the likely scenario is it ends badly for everybody, including the wild animal.”

Last year, two high school students posted a video of themselves jumping over a barrier at the Toronto Zoo to get close to a polar bear. Video: Toronto Star.

It’s possible that reality shows give people the sense that it’s acceptable to wrestle or ride wild animals, and their smart phones coupled with social media give them the means to easily create and distribute their footage.

And this problem is not just affecting animals in the wild, but in zoos and other captive settings too. Tony Vecchio, the executive director of the Jacksonville Zoo in Florida says this has been a hot topic of discussion among zoo directors. There was the video of teens in Toronto hopping a barrier to the polar bear exhibit and reaching through chain-link fencing to touch a young bear.

And just weeks ago, a man in India was arrested for entering a restricted area at the Nehru Zoological Park in order to tease and take video of himself with a jaguar, which he posted onto his Facebook page.

Vecchio recalls his staff in Oregon catching three men as they attempted to sneak into the grizzly exhibit to get a shot of themselves with the powerful bears.

Rule breaking among zoogoers is nothing new, Vecchio says, but he thinks the motive and pay-off behind attempts to get inside exhibits has changed. Now it’s not so much a misguided love of animals as it is the desire for social media immortality.

“We’ve always seen people that have had a tendency to break the rules,” Vecchio says, “but usually it used to be because they wanted to feed the animals or they thought the animals were really tame and they wanted to pet them. This is a whole new phenomenon where they want to be near the animals more for themselves than for the sake of the animals. And it’s all about getting themselves a recorded image that they can post online.”

Earlier this month, a 23-year-old man made his way to a jaguar cage at the Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderbad where he took pictures and video of himself pulling on the cat’s leg. He then posted it on Facebook. Video: Deccan Chronicle.

Still, does all this mean that harassment in general is increasing?With respect to manatees it may be. Under the headline “Manatee Harassment Is On The Rise At Florida Springs, Environmentalists Say,” the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting writes that the number of dive shops advertising “swim with the manatees” experiences is increasing.

And it’s not just individuals who are distressing wild animals in the name of getting a better angle. Last month, the whale watching tour company Juneau Whale Watch had to pay National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries “for violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act for two separate incidents, both of which occurred in August 2013,” according to the NOAA website:

The desire to take pictures with tigers became enough of a problem that the state of New York banned the practice last year. As the New York Times reported at the time:

The paper cited an incident in Kansas in 2005 in which 17-year-old girl was killed while posing for her senior pictures with a tiger. Nicole Paquette says that HSUS has been closely tracking this trend with captive animals. Aside from the inherent danger of this practice, she says, it also helps fuel the exotic pet trade. 

“Bear selfies” became such a trend, that wildlife rangers have had to post warnings about the practice.

She also says she understands a desire to be close to animals, but “There is a responsible way to go about being one with nature…but there has to be respect between you and an animal. You’ve entered their home and their environment and you’ve got to respect that balance.”

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