Animal rights activists advocate banning the depiction and dissemination of cruelty and violence against animals – and including such protections of animals in penal codes, for example. — Reuters
HANOVER: You may have wondered whether those sweet animal rescue videos you see online are actually real.
From puppies tangled up in plastic bags to helpless kittens and monkeys fighting snakes, there are countless films. You see animals on the verge of drowning, before a rescuer sprints over at the last minute to save the day – and naturally capture that on video.
Millions are drawn to these videos which attract countless likes and donations too. The thing to bear in mind is that the videos are often staged, with the only real part being the distress of the animal.
Many animals feared dead
We might all be watching the animal rescues but it is not clear what happens next to the animal, says Wiebke Plasse, spokeswoman for the World Animal Protection Society. "One can assume that most of the animals are no longer alive," she says.
That's even more likely if the animal looks as though it is injured or in particularly poor condition when the supposed rescuer shows up. Sometimes, the moment where the video starts, showing the animal looking weak, might "in reality be the end point," Plasse says.
The whole process is extremely hard on the animals affected, whether it's the ducklings stuck in the drain or a puppy entwined in a plastic net.
The animals are forced into "unfathomable situations" by people they might hope to trust, says Plasse, who describes the videos as depths we did not know existed.
The problem has been raised by a slew of animal rights groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), Animals Asia and Four Paws.
Millions of viewers
This is a "perfidious form of animal exploitation for clicks," says a report by the World Animal Protection Society and Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC), published last year.
The videos reach millions of viewers, says the publication, in what was reportedly the first comprehensive study of the problem. A significant portion of them are staged by putting animals deliberately in danger, the analysts say.
They looked at more than 1,000 videos on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X, showing supposedly abandoned animals that were buried or trapped or whose limbs were chained up or were about to drown.
Some videos show animals being rescued by other animals. In other films, we see veterinary treatments where animals are being resuscitated or freed from an unnaturally large number of parasites.
The 'monkey hater scene'
Most of the videos show cats, dogs and monkeys suffering but there are also ones involving ducks or reptiles.
Plasse spoke of one where viewers see a baby monkey playing until it suddenly falls into the water for no apparent reason and cannot climb out. It cries out in distress until its mother finally shows up, from what Plasse describes as the "monkey hater scene."
In reality what is happening is the filmmaker is recording the animal struggling not to drown the whole time, rather than intervening to rescue the animal.
The makers of the videos have a "completely different relationship to animals," Plasse says, stressing that the emotional impact of witnessing animal suffering diminishes with constant repetition.
The SMACC report shows staged videos have an immense reach, with 600 of the videos they looked at having 500 million views.
Users mostly do not realise the videos are staged so they support it by clicking on it. Don't, says Plasse and other rights groups. Do not click on them, do not share them, do not comment. Instead, users should report them, she says.
Peta says it has investigated and saved animals from many self-professed “rescues” and warns people not to be taken in by "such cruel scams," describing the sufferings of the animals as seen by undercover investigators.
It's about money
First, the video producers are trying to get clicks and be celebrated as heroes and rescuers, Plasse says. Many are accompanied by adverts that generate income. Others solicit donations. "The monetary value is the big driving force," she says.
It is hard to identify how much money is involved but a study by a SMACC member organization from 2020 said some 2,000 fake rescue videos on YouTube potentially earned up to US$15mil (RM67.51mil). These are a "new form of profits," Plasse says.
Many operations con well-meaning people into enabling their cruelty by posting pleas on social media for funds, Peta says.
Alongside the money, you may wonder what drives people to do this. It's the attention that comes with creating extreme content, says Theresa Müschner-Siemens, a veterinarian with the World Animal Protection Society.
Ultimately, people who treat animals cruelly wind up having their own problems and struggle to perceive them as "sentient beings with their own needs," says Müschner-Siemens.
That has the knock-on effect of making users who see these videos online all the time more accustomed to seeing animal suffering – and also no longer perceiving it as such.
What to do?
"The brutalisation of society is also what we want to prevent," says Plasse.
Animal rights activists advocate banning the depiction and dissemination of cruelty and violence against animals – and including such protections of animals in penal codes, for example.
In Germany, for example, the law only covers "humans or human-like beings." A petition to change this in Germany has already been signed by more than 200,000 people and counting.
Even funny videos can involve cruelty
Fake rescues involve cruel exploitation of animals but so do funny videos, where you see animals in costumes, or films involving mishaps and challenges as all these involve stressing animals, says a study by Germany's University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover.
Analysts surveyed more than 3,200 people online and found 98.5% had already seen such content. Only 46% of respondents recognised animal suffering, says veterinarian Michaela Fels, a university research assistant.
Animal cruelty can be hard to spot and it is rarely obvious that the rescues are fake, particularly as the supposed heroes increasingly resemble real ones, often wearing shirts say that seem to bear the insignia of real rescue organisations, Plasse says.
But take a closer look, she says. Real animal rescuers focus on the rescue, not on ensuring their camera work is slick. They are likely to focus less on themselves and remain relatively unknown. And hopefully they will put up fences to protect toads, say, or save fawns from straying into fields. – dpa/Tribune News Service
