The London Wildlife Trust estimates that there are now 10,000 foxes in London. Photo: AFP
No one bats an eyelid at the sight of animals such as rats and pigeons in the city. But the presence of foxes, raccoons, otters and cockatoos is much more surprising. And these species are increasingly invading the urban space.
Otters have plenty of appeal with their cute faces and soft brown fur. But not everyone is a fan of these mammals in Singapore, where their population has more than doubled since 2019, according to The Guardian.
The city-state is home to no less than 17 different families of this animal species. The phenomenon is such that “There isn’t a place in Singapore where you’d be completely isolated from otters,” N. Sivasothi, a senior lecturer in biological sciences at the National University of Singapore, told the British daily.
This omnipresence of otters is a direct consequence of the policy implemented by the government of Lee Kuan Yew since the 1980s, in a bid to improve the quality of water in the city-state’s waterways. These are now much less polluted, and therefore rich in fish. And otters are only too happy to eat the equivalent of 1kg of fish per day.
But Singaporeans are less happy about the situation. Many complain that this booming otter population disrupts traffic, loots private ponds and, more rarely, even attacks people. A British citizen said in 2021 that he “thought he was going to die” when a pack of about 20 otters chased him, tackled him to the ground and bit him about 30 times in a few seconds.
Singapore is not the only place in the world where residents are having trouble coexisting with wild animals.
Residents of Sydney’s suburbs go to great lengths to keep sulphur-crested cockatoos, a species particularly common in the region, away from their household waste. Some put a brick on the lid of their garbage can, while others prefer to attach heavy objects like plastic bottles filled with water.
The problem is that the birds are teaching each other how to outwit city dwellers, according to a study published in September in the Current Biology journal.
Londoners – like Larry, 10 Downing Street’s cat in residence – have to deal with the presence of foxes in the British capital. This famous feline was recently filmed chasing a small fox out of his street. This surprising footage has been viewed nearly six million times on the cat’s Twitter account, and has drawn the British public’s attention to a decades-old phenomenon.
Contrary to what you might think, UK cities have been home to foxes for at least 80 years. Their number stabilised in the 1980s, and the London Wildlife Trust estimates that there are now 10,000 of them in London. That is to say, about 10 per sq km. However, foxes are more and more visible because they have fewer places to hide in the city.
This problem is that the urban space as we know it was designed in opposition to wild animals, and more generally to nature. The latter is tolerated only when it is controlled. In other words, these spaces were designed for humans, not for the 8.7 million living species that inhabit the Earth.
Yet, animals love the city. They find plenty of water and food, and few predators. It is for them a true “space of freedom”, as the philosopher Joelle Zask explains in her book Zoocities (Premier Parallele, 2020).
So it’s not surprising that they’re making themselves at home. This was all the more obvious during the first Covid-19 lockdown, when animals took advantage of curfews and restrictions to explore the world’s empty streets.
Fallow deer were spotted in Boissy-Saint-Leger, in France’s Val-de-Marne region neighbouring Paris; wild goats were seen in Llandudno, a small coastal town in Wales; and a puma wandered around Nunoa, a residential area of the Chilean capital, Santiago.
These unusual scenes amused many, but they also raised an important point. What if we had to deal with wild animals on a daily basis, not just when cities are empty? Everything suggests that this is likely to happen in the near future, as a consequence of the climate crisis and the deterioration of animals’ natural environments.
Some researchers are preparing for this and are rethinking the city so that humans and animals can cohabit peacefully, like good neighbours. – AFP
