Wild animals not always good pets

Jbjsaturday

CHILDREN love animals and movies and animals in movies. But sometimes these two rather adorable forces collide with devastating effect, when well-meaning families buy pets “as seen on TV”, with little thought for the origins of their exotic new friends or how to care for them.

After the 1990 release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, rivers and lakes were suddenly populated with terrapins the size of dinner plates when overwhelmed owners dumped their once small pets.

In 2003, Finding Nemo – which ironically centred on fish being snatched from the ocean – prompted viewers to buy clownfish, driving wild populations to extinction in the Philippines, as well as parts of Thailand and Sri Lanka.

Now, with Disney’s Finding Dory and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows coming out within weeks of each other, con- servationists and charities are worried history will repeat itself and animals will be endangered.

More than a decade after Finding Nemo, a million clownfish are still being removed from wild habitats each year and sent into captivity. “People have been literally loving the clownfish to death,” said Nicholas Whipps, from the US Centre for Biological Diversity.

If attitudes don’t change, it could spell extinction for the dory fish, the regal blue tang. At the height of the clownfish craze, 90 percent of those caught were taken from the wild through cyanide fishing, which kills coral reefs and other marine life. Similar fishing methods are used to capture regal blue tangs. However, unlike clownfish, these cannot be bred in captivity – which means every “Dory” sold must come from the ocean.

Still, film- viewers buy pets because they care about the “characters”. If this enthusiasm could be directed towards conservation, animals would not only be saved but protected in the wild, said Dr Judith Lock of the Centre for Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton in the UK.

Finding Dory is out on Wednesday. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is out on July 1. – The Independent

Finding Dory, Dory in out on Wednesday.