Encountering animals on your travels can be a fun and exciting experience! But, as a responsible tourist, it’s our responsibility to consider the impact of the experience on the animals as well. Some common tourist interactions can actually be detrimental to the well-being of the animals involved.
Here are a few common tourist experiences that you should consider avoiding:
Swimming with captive dolphins
Dolphins are highly intelligent creatures used to swimming large distances each day. Unfortunately, many dolphin facilities are unable to provide sufficiently large, enriched environments for their animals. In addition, many dolphins are still captured from the wild for use in tourist experiences.
For more information, check out this website:
Whale and Dolphin Conservation: Swimming with Dolphins
Sloth selfies
Sloths are solitary animals that rely on camouflage and hiding to stay safe. They spend the majority of their lives high in the treetops. Handling by humans is very stressful for sloths. Just like dolphins, many of the sloths used in the tourism industry have been captured from the wild…ending up with significant health and welfare problems due to their captivity.
For more information, check out this website:
The Sloth Conservation Foundation: The Wildlife Selfie Problem
Petting tiger and lions cubs
Tiger and lion cubs are only useful for petting and photos during a very short time frame early in life. To obtain cubs the right age, they are taken from their mother within hours of birth and hand raised. Once they’re deemed too big or too old, these animals are no longer needed and are either sent back into breeding programs to churn out more cubs or sold to private owners where they face poor living conditions.
See this post on The Truth about Cub Petting for more information.
Feeding wildlife
Feeding wildlife can create nuisance behaviors that increase conflict with humans and can eventually result in the animal being removed or destroyed. In addition, many human foods are toxic or dangerous to animals.
Riding an elephant
The majority of elephant training still relies on fear, pain, and intimidation. While initiatives are working on improving the conditions of working elephants in the tourism industry, it’s hard for the average traveller to know what happens when they’re not present.
For more information, check out this website:
New York Times: In Thailand you can ride an elephant, but should you?
Wild animals performing unnatural acts
It may seem cute to watch a bear ride a bicycle or a monkey dance around in a tutu. However, the sourcing, training practices, and overall care of animals used in shows is often far from ideal. Try to avoid circuses, shows, or performances that utilizes wild animals in their acts. Especially if these animals are performing tricks that aren’t part of their natural behavior.
Supporting the use of poorly kept equines
Horses have been…and continue to be…a large help to humans in many areas of the world. Interacting with them as a tourist is not necessarily a bad thing, but take a few minutes to evaluate the horse or donkey’s overall condition before deciding to participate in a particular activity.
For more information, check out this blog post on How to Evaluate Horse Welfare as a Tourist.
Snake Charming
To cut down on the danger to humans involved, snakes used by snake charmers have often had their fangs or venom sacks removed…and sometimes even their mouths sewn shut!
