Beasts Entering the City to Face the New Problem of Human Habitat Ecology: When Animals and Cities "Evolve" Together

Around Bendigo's campus, kangaroos also come to sport. Photo by Guo Guangpu

Block garden naps, broom tail possums jumping on your legs; in the winter, in your own backyard, bears come to hibernate regularly; among the flowers in the residential community, the small raccoon kindergarten is newly opened... In Australia, Singapore, Canada, and many parts of the world, more and more wildlife are gradually adapting to urban environments and sharing modern cities with humans.

What kind of management norms should society initiate to ensure the safe coexistence of humans and wildlife? What kind of perception does the public need to recognize its good neighborliness? For scientists, what is the significance of this new unknown boundary for life sciences and urban development?

Stories from many cities may bring inspiration.

"City" and "wildlife" seem to exist like antonyms. In fact, in many countries and regions, wild animals are increasingly entering the cities where humans gather, inhabiting, reproducing, and even adapting to various changes in the city.

Scientists attribute this to a variety of reasons: warm climate conditions in cities; natural population expansion in search of new habitats; loss of wild habitat caused by a variety of reasons to "force" them into the city; many city dwellers tend to feed wild animals, which leads to their excessive dependence on humans. From an urban perspective, in the final analysis, the environment inhabited by humans is in direct line with the adaptive nature of wild animals. The result of these factors is coexistence.

"Animals come to town" makes scientists happy and worried

Compared with wild birds and insects, the urban activities of mammals and wild animals of medium size and above are more interesting.

In Berlin, Germany, and Barcelona, Spain, wild boars are infested. For this aggressive animal, it is mainly organized by the government and carries out the necessary population and behavior control on the basis of strict supervision.

In the city center park of Melbourne, Australia, people are in close contact with possums, and at any time there may be a small thing jumping on the knees, and the flickering eyes stare at people, without timidity. In order to prevent these little guys from climbing on the branches and affecting plant growth, the trunks and branches of the surrounding trees that are more than 1 meter above the ground or more are wrapped in a transparent duramas film to create obstacles. The following parts are not wrapped, so that the possum can rub and connect with the "tree gas".

In some of Australia's smaller cities, such as Bendigo, eucalyptus trees are outside the school, and you can often see swaying eastern gray kangaroos wandering in playgrounds and parking lots, dragging their families across the road with their mouths.

Statistics from some cities in the Americas show that the local raccoon population is more than 10 times denser per square kilometer in the wild. When it is cold, there are occasional bears in the backyard barn of the family for warmth, which has become a common thing for many residents.

Have there been studies of wildlife that enjoy urban life and have something in common? The vast majority of them are omnivorous and have a wide range of food, which makes them hungry in urban life. The medium-sized wild animal raccoon, which has been found in many major cities such as Tokyo in Japan and Seoul in South Korea, is a typical example. The list of things it can eat can be frightening: earthworms in the soil, bird eggs in trees, big fish in the river, leaves, young branches, plant fruits, grass roots, small crabs, crayfish... In addition to these natural feasts, the food waste in the human world has also entered the raccoon's menu. And their favorite food, many people did not expect - cat food. The reason is that cat food is nutritious and easy to digest.

Omnivorous is often accompanied by strong environmental adaptability, including a wide range of adaptations to temperature and humidity. When you find an easy source of water and food, as well as a place suitable for your own seclusion, wildlife naturally settles in. Some of them are newcomers to the city for the first time, and some are indigenous people who inhabited the city before the development of the city.

Interestingly, the matter of "animals entering the city" not only affects the hearts of scientists in the fields of biology and ecology, but also becomes a new reference item for scholars at the forefront of urban development. In the general direction, this means that the period of urban expansion with intensive human activities is coming to an end, or entering a new stage of development. Cities have a better habitat for diverse lives.

"This is the development of human society so far, the presentation of the psychological needs of being close to nature and returning to nature, and the call to nature will certainly be more urgent and affectionate." Guo Guangpu, associate professor of the School of Life Science and Technology of Tongji University, said: "Wild animals entering the city, sharing the city with humans, and coexisting harmoniously is an inevitable trend and a beautiful presentation of ecological civilization. ”

"Conflict" with new neighbors: cautious joy

Neighborhoods often bump into each other, and the same is true of the humans and wildlife who share the city.

Small and medium-sized mammalian wild animals such as raccoons, squirrels, and beaver rats tend to be more densely "conflicted" with humans. For example, raccoons attack domestic animals or sneak indoors to steal food, squirrels steal food from feeders for birds, and beavers dig holes in levees. For species that have actual harm to public facilities, some stricter measures are usually taken, while some species are less harmful to public facilities and the means of treatment are usually more tolerant.

At present, in some cities in Europe and the United States where wild animals have a long "residence period", an industry for this has become mature - "help you deal with the troubles of wild animals around you" business, is in full swing.

If residents find that their yards have entered foxes, squirrels or even brown bears, or some animals that they do not know, contact the relevant enterprises for the first time, after the door-to-door identification and understanding, they will make an assessment, how to deal with it, may be driven away, if they encounter dangerous and aggressive animals, there will be more severe means. Another possibility is to tell the customer that everything is left as it is. The emergence of such a new business branch is mainly because, in different countries, the laws and regulations on wildlife and related environmental management are more complicated, and a considerable part of them are managed by multi-head releases, and if residents deal with themselves, they may violate the law if they are not careful.

It is worth mentioning that overseas, wildlife management in urban areas is mostly operated by private organizations and non-governmental organizations, while the government retains the responsibility of managing migratory wild animals and large wild animals, and performs its own duties.

The urban life of wild animals has also alarmed many traditional industries, especially the insurance industry. Wild animals that do not know how to cross the road to take the crosswalk line, caused by traffic accidents, add a lot of expenses to insurance claims. In order to ensure the safety of human life, we hope to reduce the occurrence of injuries by establishing fences in accident-prone sections and setting up road signs such as "bear infestation attention" and "elk haunting attention".

More than a decade ago, there was a hot debate about otters in Singapore. It all started more than 50 years ago. Otters once lived in Singapore for a long time, the large-scale development brought about by modern social development destroyed their habitat, otters gradually disappeared, until the 1970s, Singapore began to clean up waterways, constantly improve the environment, otters slowly returned, and gradually developed a "large otter society" containing more than ten families, north to Koranchi, south to the botanical gardens, and even the financial district of the city center, there are traces of their activities.

Otters need a good aquatic environment and cannot survive once the environment is polluted. Their branches and leaves represent the success of the ecological restoration of local rivers, and their cute and clever demeanor is even more endearing. In 2016, the otter was chosen as the animal symbol of Singapore.

However, the friendly environment makes the otters somewhat "unscrupulous", and there are constant incidents of sneaking into private ponds to attack the rearing of fish, and in the eyes of the owner of the "murdered fish", the feelings for the "murderer" are somewhat complicated. More people began to discuss whether the boundaries between humans and otters and the management of otters should be redrawn.

To this day, there is still a lingering debate. But it also seems to condense human reactions to the arrival of wild animals: overwhelmed, cautious joy.

"It's important to increase the city's tolerance for wildlife and to strengthen education." Zhou Jingjing, a teacher at the School of Life Sciences of Shanghai University, believes that people without education in related fields often misinterpret the behavior of wild animals and misjudge their needs. The consequences of misinterpreting wildlife behavior include violence against animals that stems from an excessive fear of the harm or damage they may cause, such as past experiences of being bitten by animals, potential dangers resulting from mislivage of wild animals, and habituation of animal foraging through feeding. Also common in China are the phenomenon of pets being released for various reasons, as well as the "rescue" of small animals that are mistakenly considered "orphans".

Wildlife, co-"evolution" with cities

"You know what? Wild animals like raccoons have become smarter when they come to the city, with higher 'scores' on cognitive and spatial analysis tests, specifically, their ability to judge three-dimensional space and collaborate in teams has been strengthened," said Wang Fang, a researcher at Fudan University's School of Life Sciences and doctoral supervisor.

A study of fox populations living in the UK shows that over the past 30 years, it has become less aggressive and is becoming a more temperate urban animal. Among them, male foxes change more, their body shape gradually decreases, becoming similar to female foxes, and scientifically regards them as a phenomenon of "self-domestication".

More and more numbers and types of wild animals are entering the city, so that the "urbanization of wild animals" branch of the discipline of zoology is constantly expanding. Taking the urban raccoons as an example, their living habits have changed from the original complete nocturnal to day and night; from the original solitary to the group. These not small changes stem from the need to quickly adapt to the urban environment and the pace of life. The scale of adaptive change can be that the ape walks upright in the long years, or it can be several raccoon mothers in the community to play with a baby raccoon, which stunned the scientists.

The city's accommodation of wild animals is a direct embodiment of the development of ecological civilization. The presence of wild animals often also brings living indicators to urban development. In addition to hard figures such as greening rate and air pollutant content, the emergence of fireflies represents the cleanliness of air and soil; the disappearance of praying mantises and dragonflies tells about the abuse of pesticides and herbicides; woodpeckers represent the recovery of forests, and kingfishers represent healthy aquatic ecosystems...

In contrast, the living needs of wild animals in cities have also brought breakthrough enlightenment to human beings to build a more beautiful and diverse urban structure. For example, to build a modern city, is it better to harden the road surface? If the soil and vegetation were exposed more, would it be a different development path?

Column Editor-in-Chief: Wu Bin Cao Jing Text Editor: Peng Deqian

Source: Author: Peng Deqian