A blog by spcaLA president, Madeline Bernstein

Feb 24, 2016

Death by Selfie - Please Stop

coutesy google images
The obsession with selfies has become dangerous to living things.

In China, a peacock died of fright as he was passed around to tourists for selfies. An Argentina crowd did the same with a rare dolphin with the same result. A man dragged a shark out of the water on a Florida beach to take a selfie, also killing the shark. I have seen people, who should know better, attempt to grab a raccoon for a photo, or others in our deserts unable to resist a selfie with a tortoise.

In these instances there is certainly a risk to the photographers, but I must speak up for the risk to the animals. Whether they die on the spot, (how do you explain that to your children) or dehydrate and die slowly as is typical with tortoises, (you miss seeing that) it is an abominable thing to do and most certainly can be a crime. In one car commercial taking a selfie with your dog is used as proof of love and a reason to buy that car.

The craze has evolved from just posting photos of social encounters and meals, to staging weird and dangerous poses. This is not a new problem. Think back to shows about funniest videos or David Letterman's stupid pet tricks. They started out harmless and natural to choreographed daredevil stunts and a dog "trick" that was achieved by breaking the dog's back so he would walk funny.

Whether you are addicted to or apathetic towards selfies, you must agree that killing an animal by shooting a photo is the same as doing so with a gun. Let's think about our animals and not just about our "selfs".



1 comment:

  1. Sometimes I think that we have a generation of people who have no common sense.....

    ReplyDelete