We are used to seeing bears in the woods and ducks in the ponds but that doesn’t mean these creatures are lousy explorers.
On the contrary, as the Twitter account ‘Animals in the wrong places’ can quickly prove, they too like inspecting their surroundings, even if it sometimes means invading human areas.
Even though the account was created in January 2022, it already has 229,000 followers, and many of them even contribute to its feed, which is fueled in part by submissions via direct messages.
More info: Twitter
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Running into some of these animals might seem impossible, but when you think about it, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be able to take a similar picture at some point in your life.
For example, in downtown Chicago, a coyote can easily make a den in a cemetery. In fact, as insane as it sounds, there are up to 4,000 coyotes in the area.
And in Los Angeles, a mountain lion can roam the Hollywood Hills, tiptoeing around throngs of tourists without ever being seen.
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As people flock to cities like never before—six billion are expected to live in urban areas by 2045—they’re not alone.
Attracted to plentiful food and mostly protected from hunting, among other natural dangers, a colorful variety of creatures also moving into the cities.
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Several species have adapted to living in much tighter urban spaces than they do in the country. Some have become active at night, when people aren’t around, and perhaps most crucially, many have figured out how to navigate busy roads without getting hit by a vehicle.
“We forget that we are the biggest cause of evolution on the planet right now,” Suzanne MacDonald, a psychologist and biologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, who studies urban raccoons, told Nat Geo.
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“We have this view of the wild as a pristine place” and of evolution as something that happens “in the wild,” she said. “But humans in cities are changing the animals now.”
And with so many animals going urban, humans must view cities as part of—not separate from—nature, adds MacDonald.
“To live in harmony with animals whose habitat we’re destroying, we’re going to have to do a lot more work in what we’re doing to them.”
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Intrigued by the innovativeness some of the species display, urban ecologists are studying whether city animals are craftier than their rural counterparts at tackling challenges.
The Barbados bullfinch, for instance, sure seems to be. The island native has made a name for itself by stealing sugar packets from restaurant terraces.
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In lab experiments, Jean-Nicolas Audet, a biologist at Montreal’s McGill University, tested the problem-solving skills of finches captured from rural and urban areas.
Turns out, the city birds can see food inside a semi-transparent plastic box, and could access it by opening the lid or pulling a drawer.
In both experiments, they performed better at getting the food, according to a 2015 study in the journal Behavioral Ecology.
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As scientists dig deeper into how animals adapt to city living, they’re also starting to ask whether they’re actually evolving in response to this new environment.
It could be a case of extremely rapid evolution or the species we see thriving in cities are those that already had adaptations that make them more likely to succeed in such a setting.
Whatever the case might be, ‘Animals in the wrong places’ shouldn’t run out of content any time soon!
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Author: Gabija Palšytė
