Animal Stereotypes That You Hate

Simon Hampel said:
Spoken like someone who has never ridden a bike anywhere in Australia. :rolleyes:

It's practically impossible to "befriend" a magpie you never see as you ride past on your commute to work or while exercising.

It's not as if there are only one or two of them - there's thousands all nesting at different times in different locations - so while an individual may only swoop for a few weeks, the swooping season starts in early August and doesn't finish until November.

As I previously mentioned - we were able to befriend the magpies living on my parents' property and they never swooped us, but it is simply not possible to befriend all of them along your walking or cycling route.

From the website MAGPIE ALERT! For Aussies to Share Swooping Magpie Attacks Across Australia ... here was the map of reported attacks in 2021 across Sydney.

Red marks are attacks that resulted in injury.

View attachment 570485

To be clear - I love magpies, but they really are quite dangerous, even if only for a few weeks a year. I've had magpies draw blood when attacking and one nearly caused me to crash my bike at high speed - that one was particularly vicious and had a very nasty reputation - the council had to destroy it because it had injured so many people and was swooping for months on end.

Some statistics from the 2021 season - noting that COVID lockdowns did restrict the number of people commuting to work during the peak spring season.

Note also that these are only attacks reported to the Magpie Alert website - thousands more would go unreported.

Magpie swooping attack percentages across Australia by State 2021

View attachment 570491


Magpie swooping attack total figures across Australia by State 2021

View attachment 570492

Magpie swooping attack counts each week 2021

View attachment 570493


Magpie swooping attack percentages by Activity 2021

View attachment 570494

Magpie swooping attack percentages by Injury 2021

View attachment 570495
Click to expand...
Hi Simon.Of course you are 100% correct that I spoke from a point of view of one who has never ridden a pushbike in Australia. (Only motorcycles upon which I've never had an issue)

Perhaps I should have clarified that I was speaking from a pedestrian perspective but I thought it was self evident from the text where I refer to "walking". Also a pedestrian view is representative of the majority population who encounter Magpies on a daily basis so if I am remiss for not including another's view when I articulate my own position, I apologise.

In saying this I am certainly not minimising cyclists' dilemma and acknowledge that cyclists are over represented per capita in terms of "swoopees".

This is because a cyclist is far more threatening to a magpie than a pedestrian

Some reasons for this, from a magpie perspective are that they are difficult/ impossible to identify as individuals, or even human forms. As well, they move at great speed and often their movements seem unpredictable.

A magpie would read an unidentifiable, fast moving organism as a very great threat indeed to his hatchlings, nestlings and temporarily nestbound partner.

In this context the reasons for this behaviour become more obvious. In the spirit of empathic intelligence, my solution was an attempt to meet them part way and create a mòre benign outcome than shooting, trapping or poisoning. For everyone hopefully but iif not, at least for a majority.

To refer back to your response my comment was also spoken like someone who has researched and worked with Australian magpies for about 20 years.

I was simply proffering my response to your comment. Hopefully a more balanced and benign solution that benefits both sides without unduly demonising magpies. You begin by saying magpies kill more people.
"and then ammend to "cause more deaths". Perhaps you could delete the kill part as its completely inaccurate and a rather overdramatic misrepresentation.

Also you state its impossible to befriend every single magpie on a route. I disagree. Pedestrians would encounter a certain number on their journey but it would be fairly simple to acknowledge them as you walk by each day. When you say there are thousands of magpies I don't doubt you. But I'm fairly sure that no one encounters thousands on their daily journey.

Also you seem to have missed my comment towards the end which is highly relevant. Magpies communicate intergenerationally as well as across ģeographic territories. Generally speaking if you make one lot of magpies aware of your ñon threatening status, others will learn of this also. I have seen it happen many times but there have also been studies conducted which support this

Unfortunately I'm afraid I have little or no solution for the hapless cyclist. As a non human fast approaching unrecognisable beast ( to a magpie) I don't blame them for defending their family. Perhaps cyclists could take a bit more time out of their day to dismount and try to make themselves known to these unique endemic intelligent creatures. It's worth a try. Better than being killed by a muderous magpie!

Thank you for the proliferation of statistics. I do actually keep an eye on these stats as part of my studies but I appreciate the thought.

On a final note, tho I imagine it will not bear weight for many, this species has inhabited this land for millennia as evidenced by their endemic geographical spread.

Humans encroach constantly upon wildlife territory and seem surprised if encountering resistance or objection.

Magpies don't kill people. I don't dispute they can cause much damage and have caused people to topple off their bikes and die of a heart attack in at least 2 cases I've read about.
The word agonistsic is used to describe this kind of behaviour in animals. It is used in order to avoid the word aggression which implies intent and creates an emotive rather than a solution based response.
Magpies are genetically hardwired to protect their young as it takes a complicated conflation of environmental and other provisions in order to be able to breed. Only a fifth of them are able to do so and they have a high attrition rate.
As with all living creatures the imperative to survive, thrive and perpetuate the species is at the forefront of everyday life. It is simply nature. Not good for some humans, but neither are humans often good for the environment.
The incredible arrogance human beings seem to have in their smug aassumption that they occupy the pinnacle of sentient creatures never fails to amaze me.

It's always helpful to resist imputing emotive human motivations upon any wild creature. Only with clear accurate information can any viable fair humane solution be possible for harmonious, equitable, civilised co existence
 
Last edited:
Pleistocene891 said:
Hippos kill roughly 500 people per year. That’s the most of any mammal.
Click to expand...
l

One day when staying at my parents place I came across a large tooth. I thought maybe a whale but upon asking heard another of stepfather stories from the days when he used to work for the colonial service in Africa. One of his duties was to shoot rogue hippos before they killed too many villagers. They'd usually have infection of some kind, often toothache,and the pain would enrage them. They'd be hungry and in great pain and go rogue, killing many villagers in a frenzied rampage. If they were shy about showing themselves my stepfather would light a fire. The hippo would fill his mouth with water and lumber up the bank towards the fire, open his mouth and douse it. That's the method he used to lure them close enough to shoot cleanly. Hippos are the firemen of the animal kingdom!
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
Yes, good mention and actually I really hate those kind of sentiments too.

The truth is that we do worry about ourselves and our own self-importance far more than we do about the rest of life on earth continuously and give our own species far more attention than we do with any other.

I also truly dislike the "human wellbeing / welfare is a higher priority to conservation" argument because as you correctly point out the two are not mutually exclusive and should in fact be dealt with holistically.
Click to expand...
So true and really well said
.thanks
 
groundskeeper24 said:
I dislike the general idea that carnivores are mean and nasty and that herbivores are peaceful. Plenty of herbivores have combative dispositions and will kill just as quick as a carnivore. Hippos, buffalo, and zebras are all known for this.
Click to expand...
Branching off of this, I don’t like how this also applies to prehistoric animals, too.
Raptors? Sure they were carnivorous, but from what I’ve heard, they were basically coyotes with feathers.
Meanwhile, hadrosaurs were not giant, defenseless pacifists with “eat me” signs on their backs.
I’d rather let a velociraptor eat from my hand than go anywhere near a nesting Maiasaura.
 
Corangurilla said:
Branching off of this, I don’t like how this also applies to prehistoric animals, too.
Raptors? Sure they were carnivorous, but from what I’ve heard, they were basically coyotes with feathers.
Meanwhile, hadrosaurs were not giant, defenseless pacifists with “eat me” signs on their backs.
I’d rather let a velociraptor eat from my hand than go anywhere near a nesting Maiasaura.
Click to expand...
Iguanodon is another example of hadrosaurs not being defenceless… the thing uses a thumb spike to stab attackers
 
I feel like me and most people are guilty of this, but the personification of animals can be extremely detrimental. I feel like it's important to understand animals have feelings and thoughts and shouldn't be harmed by us, but us putting these human characteristics to explain animal behavior just isn't helpful. You see this a lot in nature documentaries where you root for one animal and villanize the other, when they're both just trying to survive, but also with pets. A cat clawing furniture and knocking over vases is seen as a "troublemaker" when it's just instinctual behavior.
 
Corangurilla said:
Branching off of this, I don’t like how this also applies to prehistoric animals, too.
Raptors? Sure they were carnivorous, but from what I’ve heard, they were basically coyotes with feathers.
Meanwhile, hadrosaurs were not giant, defenseless pacifists with “eat me” signs on their backs.
I’d rather let a velociraptor eat from my hand than go anywhere near a nesting Maiasaura.
Click to expand...
It completely depends on what species of dromaeosaur you’re talking about. While velociraptor is coyote size, deinonychus is the size of a large leopard, Dakotaraptor is larger than tiger, and utahraptor is bigger than a polar bear. Dromaeosaurs also had proportionally large heads compared to modern day predators.
 
groundskeeper24 said:
I dislike the general idea that carnivores are mean and nasty and that herbivores are peaceful. Plenty of herbivores have combative dispositions and will kill just as quick as a carnivore. Hippos, buffalo, and zebras are all known for this.
Click to expand...
I think the only truly “mean” animals are the ones that are smart enough to have a concept of “mean”.
Elephants, chimpanzees, dolphins, corvids, maybe a few others.
If elephants are smart enough to experience human-like emotions, I have no doubt they can willingly choose to be jerks.
 
Zoofan15 said:
I agree - especially regarding the villainisation of certain species. Except maybe sharks, no species has been more villainsed than the wolf through storybooks etc. More people are killed by domestic dogs than wolves each year in North America, with domestic dogs widely regarded as man’s best friend.
Click to expand...

There's also a couple more dogs than there are wolves...
 
Corangurilla said:
I think the only truly “mean” animals are the ones that are smart enough to have a concept of “mean”.
Elephants, chimpanzees, dolphins, corvids, maybe a few others.
If elephants are smart enough to experience human-like emotions, I have no doubt they can willingly choose to be jerks.
Click to expand...
I’m not gonna say chimps are all mean, but they have been documented to have eaten each other’s infants, right?
 
Corangurilla said:
Branching off of this, I don’t like how this also applies to prehistoric animals, too.
Raptors? Sure they were carnivorous, but from what I’ve heard, they were basically coyotes with feathers.
Meanwhile, hadrosaurs were not giant, defenseless pacifists with “eat me” signs on their backs.
I’d rather let a velociraptor eat from my hand than go anywhere near a nesting Maiasaura.
Click to expand...
Whilst I echo the sentiment that adult hadrosaurs probably were agressive animals when opportunity occurred [and perhaps adults were less preyed by smaller animals than were sick adults / young drawing from modern ecosystems], whether raptors truly lived in packs [as do coyotes today] has been something of contentious debate - given the lack of such behaviour in modern birds or reptiles.
 
dillotest0 said:
Whilst I echo the sentiment that adult hadrosaurs probably were agressive animals when opportunity occurred [and perhaps adults were less preyed by smaller animals than were sick adults / young drawing from modern ecosystems], whether raptors truly lived in packs [as do coyotes today] has been something of contentious debate - given the lack of such behaviour in modern birds or reptiles.
Click to expand...
Not a complete lack though - Harris's Hawk is a pack-hunting bird.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
I think that there is a rather ludicrous amount of anthropomorphism taking place within this thread of late :p and in reply to the most recent example, infant cannibalism is an extremely commonplace occurrence throughout nature.
Click to expand...
Fair point :p just used the chimp example as someone had mentioned them previously so I made my statement.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top