I took my first international trip to Kenya in 2013, inspired in part by a summer internship I had in the education department of a zoo. That trip changed the way I looked at travel.
Since then, the entire purpose of my travel has been to see wild animals in wild places.
There is something awe inspiring about seeing an elephant crossing the road in Kenya, a troop of monkeys moving through the forest in Costa Rica, or a sloth moving through the canopy in Colombia. You're not just looking at an animal. You're seeing it as part of an ecosystem, behaving on its own terms, in a place where it belongs.
But that doesn't automatically make every wildlife experience ethical.
Just like zoos, which we'll get into in a later post, there are good and bad ways to see animals in the wild. There are also good and bad ways to interact with animals while traveling.
Some of the people who love animals the most can unintentionally contribute to their exploitation. Not because they don't care, but because the reality behind a seemingly harmless animal encounter isn't always obvious.
A photo with a sloth. Holding a baby monkey. Riding an elephant. Feeding a wild animal. Swimming with a dolphin.
The experience might last five minutes. The consequences can last much longer.
#StopAnimalSelfies
In 2019, Costa Rica became the first country in the world to launch a national campaign against wildlife selfies. A World Animal Protection report had ranked it seventh globally for photos involving direct contact with wild animals, which is not the list a country built on ecotourism wants to appear on.
The campaign came with regulation behind it. Wildlife rescue centers must be nonprofit and closed to the public. No facility may allow visitors to hold wild animals. Keeping wild animals as pets and feeding wildlife are both prohibited.
Animal selfies are one of the most common forms of wildlife tourism, and they can be much more harmful than they appear.
You've probably seen them: monkeys in Colombia, tiger cubs in Thailand, sloths being passed around in Costa Rica, or a colorful parrot perched on a tourist's shoulder on a Caribbean beach.
The picture itself isn't necessarily the problem. It's what has to happen to the animal for that picture to be possible.
A wild animal that wants nothing to do with humans generally isn't going to sit still while dozens of tourists take turns holding it.
There are several major concerns with commercial wildlife handling:
1. Disease transmission
Wildlife can carry pathogens that can be transmitted to humans, and humans can also transmit diseases to wildlife. The closer and more frequent the contact, the greater the opportunity for disease transmission.
It runs both directions.
2. Wildlife exploitation and poaching
When wild animals become valuable because tourists are willing to pay to interact with them, there is an economic incentive to capture, breed, trade, and exploit them.
That doesn't mean every animal encounter is directly connected to poaching. But creating a market for wildlife can contribute to a system where animals become commodities rather than wildlife.
And once there is money to be made from an animal, someone will eventually find a way to make money from it.
3. Animal suffering
The animal in the photograph might look calm. That doesn't necessarily mean it is comfortable.
Wild animals used for tourism may be captured, separated from their mothers, restrained, confined, or subjected to repeated handling. Some are kept in conditions that would never be acceptable if the same thing were happening to a dog or cat.
And because stress isn't always obvious, a frightened animal can look perfectly "happy" in a photograph.
This is one of the biggest problems with animal selfies. We tend to judge the experience based on what the animal looks like in the picture, rather than what the animal had to experience to get there.
4. Removing animals from ecosystems has consequences
Every animal exists within a much larger system.
Removing wildlife from the wild doesn't just affect that individual animal. It can affect reproduction, social groups, predator-prey relationships, seed dispersal, and other ecological processes.
Wildlife tourism should create an incentive to protect animals where they naturally occur, not create a financial reason to take them out of those ecosystems.
So, Are All Animal Selfies Bad?
Not necessarily.
The goal shouldn't be to create a simplistic rule that says every photograph involving an animal is unethical. The important question is how that interaction came about.
There is a huge difference between taking a photograph of a wild elephant from a safe distance and posing with a wild animal that has been captured and restrained for tourists.
There are also situations involving domestic animals where close interaction can be completely appropriate.
Which brings us to one of the most important distinctions to understand.
Domestic vs. Wild
Not every animal you encounter while traveling is wildlife.
Dogs, cats, horses, goats, cattle, sheep, and many other domestic animals have been selectively bred by humans for thousands of years. Through domestication, humans have changed their behavior, appearance, and biology, allowing them to live alongside us and, in many cases, serve particular purposes.
A domestic goat on a farm is very different from a wild mountain goat.
A horse carrying a rider is very different from an elephant carrying a rider. Horses have been bred to work alongside people for thousands of years. Elephants have never been domesticated. Every elephant used for riding is a wild animal that was broken individually.
Domestic animals don't have a wild version of their life to go back to. Goats, horses, and dogs exist because we made them exist, and a good life for them is one lived alongside people rather than away from them. That doesn't mean anything goes. It means the questions are different.
With domestic animals, look for:
- Clean, spacious living conditions with shelter, shade, and room to move
- Consistent veterinary care, including hoof and dental work for animals that need it
- The ability to make choices, to walk away, rest, graze, or opt out of an interaction
- Work that suits the animal, in duration and intensity, with real breaks
- Handlers who read the animal and adjust, rather than making it comply
- A life that continues after the tourists leave, rather than one built around them
The fact that an animal is comfortable around people doesn't automatically make it domestic, either.
This distinction becomes especially important with captive wild animals.
A tiger born in captivity is still a tiger. A macaw raised by humans is still a wild species. A monkey that has been handled by people since birth hasn't suddenly become a domesticated animal.
Being accustomed to humans is not the same thing as being domesticated.
That distinction gets lost constantly in wildlife tourism.
Ask Yourself: Why Is This Animal Interacting With Me?
This is probably the simplest question you can ask before participating in an animal encounter.
Why is this animal here?
If the answer is:
"Because this is where the animal naturally lives, and we're observing it from a respectful distance."
That's a pretty good start.
If the answer is:
"Because someone brought the animal here so tourists can hold it."
That's a very different situation.
The same goes for feeding.
If a responsible wildlife guide takes you to observe wild parrots feeding naturally in the forest, you're witnessing normal behavior.
If someone has a wild animal sitting on a platform because tourists pay to feed it, you're participating in an artificial interaction that may change the animal's behavior and relationship with humans.
The closer you get, the more questions you should ask.
A Few Questions to Ask Before Booking an Animal Encounter
Before paying for a wildlife experience, ask:
- Is the animal wild, domestic, or captive?
- If it is wild, am I being asked to touch, feed, hold, or ride it?
- Can the animal leave if it wants to?
- Are there barriers between people and wildlife?
- How many people interact with the animal each day?
- Does the experience interfere with normal animal behavior?
- Where did the animals come from?
- What happens to the animals when tourists aren't there?
- Does the organization contribute to conservation, or is "conservation" simply part of the marketing?
And perhaps most importantly:
- Would this experience still exist if tourists stopped wanting to touch the animals?
That question can tell you a lot.
The Best Wildlife Encounter Is Often the One Where Nothing Happens
One of my favorite things about wildlife travel is that wild animals don't owe us an experience.
Sometimes you spend hours looking for something and see nothing.
Sometimes you drive past a herd of elephants and they disappear into the bush before you can get a good photograph.
Sometimes the sloth is too high in the tree.
Sometimes the bird flies away.
That's wildlife.
I think that's part of what makes it so incredible.
The goal shouldn't be to force an animal to give us the perfect photograph. The goal should be to create opportunities for people to observe animals behaving naturally without becoming part of the behavior themselves.
Some of my best wildlife experiences have been the ones where I didn't get the perfect photo. Sometimes I barely got a photo at all.
But I got to watch an animal do exactly what it was supposed to be doing, in a place where it belonged, without needing anything from me.
That's the experience I'm looking for when I travel.
A good wildlife encounter leaves the animal's life mostly unchanged.
You get the memory.
Maybe you get the photograph.
And the animal gets to keep being an animal.
To me, that's what ethical wildlife tourism should be about.