Primate Selfies and Anthropozoonotic Diseases: Lack of Rule Compliance and Poor Risk Perception Threatens Orangutans

Abstract

Our understanding of the transmission of anthropozoonotic diseases between humans and nonhuman primates, particularly great apes due to their close genetic relationship with humans, highlights a serious potential threat to the survival of these species. This is particularly the case at tourism sites where risk of disease transmission is increased. We focus on the interaction between tourists and the Critically Endangered Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) at Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia, before and after the park was closed due to the threat of Covid-19 in April 2020. Through analysis of posts on Instagram we determine the extent of compliance by visitors with the rule to keep a minimum distance of 10 meters from orangutans and assess the positional behaviours of the orangutans. Of the 2,229 photographs we assessed between November 2019 and July 2020, 279 depicted one or more orangutans. Forty-two of these contained both a human and an orangutan, and of these all showed inappropriate behaviours (direct contact, feeding orangutans, close proximity <5m) providing direct evidence of noncompliance with the 10m distance rule. Most of these photographs additionally showed orangutans performing abnormal positional behaviours such as being low to or on the ground rather than their natural high position in the canopy; being near the ground and in close proximity to humans increases the risk of anthropozoonotic disease transmission. As expected, we found a significant decrease in number of photographs that were posted following the closure, and a decrease in the proportion of photographs that showed orangutans or tourists feeding orangutans. Tourists do not seem to perceive that they pose risks to the orangutans and therefore increased awareness, education and enforcement of rules by all stakeholders, tourism bodies and government officials need to be actioned in order to safeguard this important population, which is crucial to the future survival of the Sumatran orangutan.

A social media-based framework for quantifying temporal changes to wildlife viewing intensity: Case study of sea turtles before and during COVID-19

“…Other studies arbitrarily grouped information into monthly periods. For instance, Molyneaux et al (2021) compared the monthly number of photographs posted on Instagram before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to quantify variation in interactions between tourists and orangutans. Barros et al (2019) observed that Flickr geotagged data have enough information to capture daily, weekly and monthly distribution patterns of visitors of Spanish national parks, but did not perform temporal comparisons of visitor numbers across years.…”

“…Other studies arbitrarily grouped information into monthly periods. For instance, Molyneaux et al . (2021) compared the monthly number of photographs posted on Instagram before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to quantify variation in interactions between tourists and orangutans.…”

“…Our model also allows temporal changes to viewing pressure of specific animal individuals/groups to be focused on by combining social media images with photo-identification records. Examples of this include analysis of specific dog dens (Cloutier et al ., 2021), gorilla family groups (Molyneaux et al ., 2021), and resident foraging sea turtles versus migratory turtles (Papafitsoros et al ., 2021). This flexibility is particularly important because wildlife viewing pressure is not equally distributed across all animals present at a given site or time period.…”

“…The rise of social media, image sharing and the widespread use of mobile phone cameras has generated an extra level of pressure on wildlife, through huge demand for “selfies” and “close-up” images with animals, resulting in close encounters between humans and wild animals that have potential negative impacts (Semeniuk et al ., 2009; Christiansen and Lusseau, 2014; Lenzi et al ., 2020; Papafitsoros et al ., 2021; Molyneaux et al ., 2021; Van Hamme et al ., 2021). Yet, because viewing wild animals is intrinsically linked with taking photographs and videos, social media is also being explored as a useful tool to inform conservation science (Dickinson et al ., 2012; Di Minin et al ., 2015; Toivonen et al ., 2019).…”

“…Such data are being used to quantitatively evaluate interactions between humans and wildlife in both terrestrial (e.g. mountain gorillas ( Gorilla beringei ) (Van Hamme et al ., 2021), orangutangs ( Pongo abelii ) (Molyneaux et al ., 2021)) and marine enviroments (e.g. sea turtles ( Caretta caretta ) (Papafitsoros et al ., 2021), monk seals ( Neomonachus schauinslandi ) (Sullivan et al ., 2019)).…”