could you speak more to the point you made about seals in your post about moo deng? i see a lot of videos of seals at aquariums and want to know like, bad things i should be looking out for. thank you for your thoughtful writeups!
Thank you for your question! It's just a pet peeve I've had about people "dog-ifying" seals so they ignore a lot of behaviours that are indications of stress or aggression. And as long as it's memeable the facility's conditions aren't questioned.
Like this:
That water is absolutely filthy and belly slapping (unless it's a cued behaviour) is a threat display. But these videos seem to still be considered acceptable meme content...
A lot of "funny seal videos" are of unsafe wildlife interactions, like divers allowing seals to chew on their gear or people letting their dogs chase and interact with seals. Because seals appear more dog-like and is cute, they are more "meme-able".
A big example of this is Neil the seal, a juvenile elephant seal demonstrating a disturbing level of habituation towards humans and, as he's grown up, is also showing signs of hormonal aggressive behaviour towards things like traffic cones, in preparation for future fights against other elephant seals for territory.
Because he's become a meme though, no one is taking his behaviour seriously and people get way too close to him, despite it being illegal to do so. He shows aggression towards to authorities trying to move him off the road and away from danger as well.
Marine mammal experts had to stop sharing his location so people would stop tracking him down to shove a camera in his face for their viral videos
His aggressive displays are still laughed off as "Neil just being silly and having fun" - but it won't be funny when he's a full grown elephant seal male body slamming cars and fences down. He has been relocated several times and continues to come back because he's been habituated so throughly by the locals.
That's a threat display. He's not a dog. jfc. This guy was even hosing Neil down with water, which was reinforcing enough that he kept coming back.
Remember who else got lots of memes for being so "iconic"?
Yeah.... Poor Freya. She just was looking for a place to haul out and rest and people wouldn't leave her alone.
But the reason why I feel this is similar to Moo Deng, is because she's also having stress and threat displays distilled to "haha she's so mad" memes.
lol it's so funny how mortified she looks..... probably because she's a baby being constantly poked, chased, prodded, picked up, hosed and harassed when she should be hanging out with her mother in peace.
Neil is showing threat displays and aggression, but being ignored and memed into obilivion.
Seals are unfortunately more vulnerable to social media hype, as well as any animal the public deems as cute and "marktable".
