Quarantine encounters with digital animals: More-than-human geographies of lockdown life

Abstract

Quarantine conditions led to the proliferation of digital encounters with nonhuman animals. Here, we explore three prominent forms: creaturely cameos, avatar acquaintances and background birding. These virtual encounters afforded during lockdown life generated novel and affective human–animal relations that could have lasting effects for humans and nonhumans post-quarantine, posing interesting questions for more-than-human scholarship.

After the anthropause: Lockdown lessons for more‐than‐human geographies

“…Third, more‐than‐human vernacular experiences of the anthropause often took place in digital spaces. Through the emergence of digital “creaturely cameos” (Turnbull et al, 2020b) – the livestreaming of animals to paying customers − people found new ways to interact with animals and nature during quarantine. In the UK, webcams livestreaming video from birds’ nests experienced surges in online traffic as confined people flocked online to birdwatch (Turnbull et al, 2020a, 2020b).…”

“…Through the emergence of digital “creaturely cameos” (Turnbull et al, 2020b) – the livestreaming of animals to paying customers − people found new ways to interact with animals and nature during quarantine. In the UK, webcams livestreaming video from birds’ nests experienced surges in online traffic as confined people flocked online to birdwatch (Turnbull et al, 2020a, 2020b). Instances of game‐based virtual wildlife encounter, evidenced through the success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Garcia, 2020), also offered distraction from confinement, as did virtual tours of landscapes including the Faroe Islands and Yosemite National Park.…”

“…In Spain and the Netherlands a million mink were culled due to 87% of the animals testing positive for COVID‐19 in fur farms (Kevany, 2020b). The lives of animals in captivity were also directly affected by the absence of visitors and volunteers, leading to changed behavioural patterns of individual animals (Turnbull et al, 2020b). Legitimate concerns have also been raised about the companion animals of the deceased during the pandemic (Scannell, 2020), who are at risk of abandonment and neglect (Fraser et al, 2020).…”

“…Varied practices of furlough, lockdown, shielding, and working from home created new modes of human (im)mobility and forms of attention, allowing a diverse array of human–animal encounters to flourish. These range from back‐garden birdwatching (Rice et al, 2020) and domestic pet‐keeping to livestreamed digital animal interactions (Turnbull et al, 2020b) and virtual gaming. Different people’s everyday interactions with nature, animals, and wildlife have been significantly restructured, out of both necessity and choice.…”

Checkpoint dogs: Photovoicing canine companionship in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

“…5 Furthermore, many dogs are tourist attractions in their own right, 6 gaining large followings on social media platforms like Instagram. During the Covid-19 quarantine, the dogs were live-streamed to paying customers via Airbnb Experiences, as tourists could not visit the Zone (Turnbull et al 2020). They are also the subject of numerous documentaries such as Fallout dogs by Julia Oldham (2019) and Dogs of Chernobyl: The untold story by Léa Camilleri and Hugo Chesnel (2020).…”