"This is actually a very, very stressful situation for the stingray."
Here's the ugly truth behind the internet's "cute" animal videos...
Here's the ugly truth behind the internet's "cute" animal videos...
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00How do you tickle a fish?
00:27One of the first things they teach you in scuba diving is to not touch the animals.
00:31You run the risk of hurting yourself, but more importantly you have a chance of hurting
00:34the animal as well.
00:36Now I know it looks like this ray is laughing when this guy tickles it, but that is a classic
00:40case of anthropomorphism, which is where we assign human characteristics and behaviors
00:45to animals and non-human objects.
00:49In reality, this is a very, very stressful situation for the ray.
00:53Think about it like this.
00:55This ray is supposed to be breathing water and now it is up in air and somebody is forcing
01:01it to open its mouth and let out all the water that it needs and instead replace that with
01:06air.
01:14So remember guys, all of these videos that we see online of animals doing cute things
01:18may look fun and harmless to us, but in reality it may be a traumatic experience for the animal.
01:25If you knew that tickling a slow loris is actually torturing it.
01:36This loris has her arms up because she is terrified and is trying to protect herself
01:41by gathering venom from a gland inside her elbow.
01:50But slow lorises are suffering terribly as a result of the pet trade fueled by these
01:55videos.
01:57Before a slow loris is sold as a pet, its teeth are removed without an aesthetic.
02:04Lorises are smuggled in dark, overcrowded, airless containers alongside the bodies of
02:10other lorises that have died.