Every few months, people decide they deeply love an animal they haven’t met.
Last year, it was Moo Deng, a pygmy hippo in a zoo in Thailand. Moo was hungry, playful, pushy, and good looking. She had no spines, no jagged edges—nothing that would trigger an amygdala panic response. She was instead all wholesome plumpness, rushing towards her keeper (and her lunch) with her little mouth open in a great grin. So large was her fandom that the zoo overflowed and people got inspired in ways that went beyond the zoo. Women made makeup videos to look like Moo Deng and capture her blush pink undertone; pages on the internet were devoted to her antics. The current craze is Punch, a baby Japanese macaque. Punch lives in a zoo in Japan, and was reportedly abandoned by his mother. From a young age, Punch clung to a little brown soft toy his keepers gave him, a monkey plushie that reminded our young hero of his kin. Living alone for a while, gripping his soft toy, Punch became a symbol for a sort of wistful loneliness.
As the days passed, people followed the fate of Punch with bated breath. Punch was introduced to other monkeys but it was uncertain if he would be accepted. A final, decisive hug between Punch and an older monkey brought relief to both simian and simian fans. Slowly, Punch integrated with another troop, and people could be sure it was a happy ending, neat and comforting.
Yet we don’t often have comforting happy endings for wild animals, those who live in their habitat outside our timings and structure. Germany, that well-endowed country known for its impeccable engineering, has just announced the hunting of wild wolves, animals that have recolonised parts of Europe in recent years. Wolves may have come to Germany via Poland, reclaiming a range they had lost. They are now being blamed for taking livestock—a natural behaviour that occurs if grazing areas mesh with wild animal territories. Wolves cause very little economic damage, and so the move betrays a larger insecurity—of the human need to control the wild, and failing that, to reduce it.
Wolves are related to dogs, but they do not have the goodwill of the latter, the tame, co-dependent pet. In essence, our affection for the animal in captivity and the aversion of its wild ancestors shows we prefer the tame, plump or cute, that we like a living creature to not be too close to us.
Loving an animal on the internet provides the perfect distance this enterprise requires—the photogenic faces without animal smells, curated videos and none of the teeth. But wild animals live their lives in the real world, and so we must walk the terra firma of this world, and that of our minds. I am not against the love for animal pin-ups at all; my plea is to extend it to wild animals.
Nationally, tigers and leopards get picked up as conflict animals, without proper profiling of each individual. Did the animal cause ‘conflict’? Is it a habitual offender? Does removal solve problems, or do the drivers of conflict remain, only to cause more incidents? These are questions worth thinking about and implementing at the policy level. Wild animals too form intense bonds, and live and love by rules that we value—parental care, playfulness, valuing survival over odds.
It is perfectly human to love the sweet, beguiling animal; this is what keeps us connected with the world beyond our immediate needs. I hope we can also find empathy for a wilder animal, to find softness for something when it is more than a soft toy.
Views expressed are personal
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