A viral video and pet lemurs on Twitter

Normal redefined: Exploring decontextualization of lorises (Nycticebus & Xanthonycticebus spp.) on social media platforms

Introduction

Decontextualization is a concept from psychology whereby new words are learned outside of the context of the here-and-now. Decontextualized language is used for discussing abstract concepts and is crucial to the development of academic language. When it comes to images, a dearth of context can lead to a lack of clarity, such as the use of ambiguous decontextualized images in environmental communication, leading to the promotion of greenwashing. Here we refer to decontextualization as the removal of wildlife from their wild ecological context. Images and videos of globally threatened species are increasingly popular on social media. Showing such taxa alongside humans may impact public perceptions of their abundance and need for conservation and can increase illegal trade. One group of animals that are particularly popular on social media platforms are the slow and pygmy lorises (Nycticebus spp., Xanthonycticebus spp.).

Methods

Here, we examined 100 videos from three popular social media platforms (YouTube, TikTok, and Giphy) to calculate how often and in which ways these videos remove slow lorises from their natural ecological and behavioural context. We also examined views and likes to determine viewer engagement trends. We used relevant content from each site to assess the presence of decontextualization using five conditions.

Results

In all but two videos, conditions of decontextualization were present and 77% of all videos had four to five conditions of decontextualization. Using Spearman correlation, we found a significant effect of decontextualization scores on the number of views and likes for YouTube and TikTok videos. Views were significantly higher when videos presented animals in anthropogenic settings (i.e., in human-made structures or in proximity of human artefacts). Additionally, views on TikTok and YouTube were significantly higher when animals displayed signs of stress or ill health and when they were in unnatural conditions.

Discussion

Our case study of lorises provides an example of the danger of decontextualizing wild animals on social media. Public preference for imagery where animals are neglected is indicative that better guidelines need to be put in place and policed by social media platforms. Additionally, conservationists need to develop strategies to promote wild imagery and further explore decontextualization if we are to understand and address the drivers of the rampant illegal wildlife trade online.

Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos

Documenting the behavioural repertoire of an animal species is important for understanding that species' natural history. Many behaviours such as mating, parturition and death may be observed only rarely in the wild due to the low frequency of occurrence, short duration and the species' elusiveness. Opportunistic documentation of rare behaviours is therefore valuable for deciphering the behavioural complexity in a species. In this context, digital platforms may serve as useful data sources for studying rare behaviours in animals. Using videos uploaded on YouTube, we document and construct a tentative repertoire of thanatological responses (death-related behaviours) in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). The most frequently observed thanatological responses included postural changes, guarding/keeping vigil, touching, investigating the carcass, epimeletic behaviours and vocalizations. We also describe some infrequently observed behaviours, including carrying dead calves by adult females, re-assurance-like behaviours and attempts to support dying or dead conspecifics, some of which were only known anecdotally in Asian elephants. Our observations indicate the significance of open-source video data on digital platforms for gaining insights into rarely observed behaviours and support the accumulating evidence for higher cognitive abilities of Asian elephants in the context of comparative thanatology.

Evaluating the benefits and risks of social media for wildlife conservation

Given its extensive volume and reach, social media has the potential to widely spread conservation messaging and be a powerful tool to mobilize social change for conserving biodiversity. We synthesized gray and primary academic literature to investigate the effects of social media on wildlife conservation, revealing several overarching benefits and risks. We found that social media can increase pro-conservation behaviours among the public, increase conservation funding, and incite policy changes. Conversely, social media can contribute to species exploitation and illegal trade, cause unprecedented increases in tourism in protected areas, and perpetuate anti-conservation behaviours via misinformation. In most cases, we found that content sharing on social media did not result in a detectable impact on conservation; in this paper, however, we focus on providing examples where conservation impact was achieved. We relate these positive and negative outcomes of social media to psychological phenomena that may influence conservation efforts and discuss limitations of our findings. We conclude with recommendations of best practices to social media administrators, public social media users, nongovernmental organizations, and governing agencies to minimize conservation risks while maximizing beneficial outcomes. By improving messaging, policing online misconduct, and providing guidance for action, social media can help achieve wildlife conservation goals.

Pet primates for sale in the United States

Our research goal was to investigate the primate pet trade in the United States. While dogs and cats are the most common type of pet, there are an estimated 15,000 pet primates in the United States and the demand for exotic pets in general has been rising. Most research on pet primates occurs in habitat countries and little is known about these pets in the United States. We collected data from six exotic pet-trade websites twice a month for 12 months. We recorded the type of primate for sale, sex, age, location, and price. We used Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit tests to compare whether the number of male and female pet primates for sale and the number of different age categories of pet primates for sale differed from equality and Spearman Correlation to examine associations between price and size and price and supply. We recorded 551 pet primates for sale between June 2019-June 2020, with 69.1% platyrrhines, 21.6% strepsirrhines, and 8.9% catarrhines. Marmosets were sold most often (36.7%, N = 202) followed by lemurs (21.6%, N = 119), capuchins (11.3%, N = 62), and squirrel monkeys (10.5%, N = 58). Almost two-thirds of the pet primates for sale were male (Chi-Square = 16.056, df = 1, P = 0. 00006) and 78.7% were under one year old (Chi-Square = 440.264, df = 2, P<0.00001). The median price was $3,800 though price was highly variable, even for the same taxa. There are several potential drivers for the primate pet trade, including media influence, fashion/status, and profitable breeding though these are not mutually exclusive. Primates do not make good pets and even when captive-bred, pet primates impact the conservation of their wild counterparts. Advertisement campaigns focusing on disease transmission and legal consequences and a federal ban on pet primate ownership are two avenues to pursue to end the ownership of pet primates in the United States.

Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Lemur Gut and Soil Microbiota Along a Gradient of Anthropogenic Disturbance

The overuse of man-made antibiotics has facilitated the global propagation of antibiotic resistance genes in animals, across natural and anthropogenically disturbed environments. Although antibiotic treatment is the most well-studied route by which resistance genes can develop and spread within host-associated microbiota, resistomes also can be acquired or enriched via more indirect routes, such as via transmission between hosts or via contact with antibiotic-contaminated matter within the environment. Relatively little is known about the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance on reservoirs of resistance genes in wildlife and their environments. We therefore tested for (a) antibiotic resistance genes in primate hosts experiencing different severities and types of anthropogenic disturbance (i.e., non-wildlife animal presence, human presence, direct human contact, and antibiotic treatment), and (b) covariation between host-associated and environmental resistomes. We used shotgun metagenomic sequencing of ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) gut resistomes and associated soil resistomes sampled from up to 10 sites: seven in the wilderness of Madagascar and three in captivity in Madagascar or the United States. We found that, compared to wild lemurs, captive lemurs harbored greater abundances of resistance genes, but not necessarily more diverse resistomes. Abundances of resistance genes were positively correlated with our assessments of anthropogenic disturbance, a pattern that was robust across all ten lemur populations. The composition of lemur resistomes was site-specific and the types of resistance genes reflected antibiotic usage in the country of origin, such as vancomycin use in Madagascar. We found support for multiple routes of ARG enrichment (e.g., via human contact, antibiotic treatment, and environmental acquisition) that differed across lemur populations, but could result in similar degrees of enrichment. Soil resistomes varied across natural habitats in Madagascar and, at sites with greater anthropogenic disturbance, lemurs and soil resistomes covaried. As one of the broadest, single-species investigations of wildlife resistomes to date, we show that the transmission and enrichment of antibiotic resistance genes varies across environments, thereby adding to the mounting evidence that the resistance crisis extends outside of traditional clinical settings.

Australia’s wish list of exotic pets: biosecurity and conservation implications of desired alien and illegal pet species

Globalisation of the live pet trade facilitates major pathways for the transport and introduction of invasive alien species across longer distances and at higher frequencies than previously possible. Moreover, the unsustainable trade of species is a major driver for the over-exploitation of wild populations. Australia minimises the biosecurity and conservation risk of the international pet trade by implementing highly stringent regulations on the live import and keeping of alien pets beyond its international CITES obligations. However, the public desire to possess prohibited alien pets has never been quantified and represents a number of species that could be acquired illegally or legally under different future legislative conditions. As such, highly desirable species represent an ongoing conservation threat and biosecurity risk via the pet-release invasion pathway.

We aimed to characterise the Australian desire for illegal alien pets and investigate potential sources of external information that can be utilised to predict future desire. Using public live import enquiry records from the Australian Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment as a proxy for alien pet desire, we tested for differences in the proportion of species with threatened listings and records of invasions, after accounting for taxonomy. Additionally, we used a United States of America (U.S.) live imports dataset to infer pet demand in another Western market with less stringent regulations and determined whether species highly desired in Australia had higher U.S. trade demand than would be expected by chance.

The Australian public desire for alien pets is heavily and significantly biased towards species threatened with extinction, species popular in the U.S. trade and species with a history of successful invasions. Not only does this indicate the potential impacts of pet desire on invasion risk and the conservation of threatened species, but we also highlight the potential role of the U.S. trade as an effective predictor for Australian desire. Our research emphasises the value of novel datasets in building predictive capacity for improved biosecurity awareness.