The Yunnan Wild Animal Park in China lost on Feb. 12 two peacocks because of selfie-taking visitors.
The zoo visitors picked up the birds and roughly handled it. Peacocks usually do not approach zoo visitors, but they lured the peacocks with food and then grabbed the bird by the tail. Zookeepers who saw the incident rushed to stop the visitors, especially when they not only took selfies with the bewildered birds but also violently plucked the peacock’s feathers as souvenir, reported Mashable.
The park visitors then posted the photo on Sina Weibo, the biggest microblogging site in China, and it became viral. The Yunnan park confirmed on Sunday that the incident happened on Feb. 12. Thirty minutes after the incident, a 5-year-old peacock died of fright, said Bai, the zoo spokesperson.
According to Dr. Li, a veterinarian at the Kunming East Hospital, the peacock could die because of fright or suffer heart attacks if it is exposed to big shocks. The zoo has yet to file charges against the visitors, but their behavior was criticized on social media and mainstream media.
The New York Daily News commented, “Hope your selfie gets 0 likes,” while Humberto Fernan Mandirola Brieux, who shared the daily’s article, added, “First a dolphin. Now peacocks. Please Help animals!!!”
Oboth Timothy Edwards call the photo taking “shameless selfies,” while Ryu Khurosawa wrote, “Selfie is a tumour in human race.” Chandan Das asked, “Argentina & china wtf is this ??? Are u humans”
Brieux and Das are referring to a similar incident a few days ago after a photo of a baby dolphin in Argentina became viral. Taken at Santa Terisita beach, the photo showed beachgoers holding the baby Franciscana dolphin which eventually died of dehydration because it was out of the water for a long time. The beachgoers then left the dolphin on the shore motionless, reported CSMonitor.
On Monday, a similar incident again happened in Florida when a man on Palm beach dragged a small shark caught in the Atlantic Ocean. He pulled the struggling fish by its tail, pinned it on the sand and posed while the crowd tool selfies. A 1-minute, 42-second video, posted on Facebook by a TV anchor from WPTV, showed that another man later dragged the shark back into the ocean.
Selfies apparently are fatal, not only to people who fall off cliffs or river or crash their vehicles. It turns out that even the life of animals could be in danger too because of selfies.