Synanthropic animals are wild animals that benefit from their interactions with human-altered
environments.
They might love our homes, or our rubbish, or our artificially altered environments - but
domestic animals don’t count.
So here are some of the best examples of animals that thrive around humans, and as a bonus,
we’re going to focus on Australian animals.
Well, KIND of Australian, because our first animal is introduced - the cane toad.
But their introduction actually illustrates the point perfectly - that cane toads thrive
around humans.
While humans are of course responsible for introducing cane toads to Australia, did you
know we’re also partly responsible for how well cane toads have spread across northern
Australia.
This is because cane toads thrive in a suburban environment.
Cane toads love nestling in freshly watered lawns - although their skin is much hardier
than your average Anuran.
And they love the churned up soil of disturbed environments, that brings moisture and bugs
to the surface.
All of these are things humans have inadvertently gifted the cane toad, which toads have exploited
to help them spread across the northern portion of the continent.
Of course there are some negative impacts of human habitation on cane toads - such as
swimming pools which a toad can easily get in, but cannot as easily get out.
Kids hunting them with cricket bats and tennis racquets, and drivers with toad rage, swerving
to kill them.
But on the whole, our alterations of the Australian environment help toads thrive in suburbia,
and can help them survive in places and in seasons where they might not otherwise.
When thinking about non-domesticated animals that thrive around humans, probably a few
birds come to mind.
The silver gull - or what Australians just call the seagull - is a great example.
Seagulls are amazing scavengers.
For birds that in the wild eat fish, squid, and krill - they have adapted remarkably well
to refuse.
Humans are fantastic at generating waste, and where that waste is collected, you find
seagulls.
Another bird you find in many major cities is the pigeon.
To me, pigeons have always seemed out of place in cities.
How can a delicate-seeming dove thrive in a concrete jungle?
But actually it’s the concrete that they love.
City-pigeons descended from pigeons that roost along the rocky cliffs and crevices of North
Africa, Europe and Asia.
So tall buildings made of concrete, stone, or metal are actually great proxies for the
cliffs that pigeons are naturally drawn to.
They’re also not picky with their food, which helps around humans.
But the Australian synanthropic bird that might surprise you the most - is Australia’s
answer to the the trash panda.
The bin chicken.
The Australian ibis has a long curved beak that is fantastically adapted to searching
out food in shallow wetlands.
But the ibis isn’t too bothered about what it eats, so in Australia it has put that long,
curved beak to use by foraging in bins for human’s rubbish.
These birds thrive in the biggest cities in Australia, particularly Sydney, where it’s
a common sight to see ibises perched on bins, scavenging for scraps.
This of course has led to the affectionate moniker, bin chicken.
Bats have a rocky relationship with humans - and Australia is home to one of the largest
bats in the world - the grey-headed flying fox.
Which is part of a family of bats sometimes called fruit bats.
Flying foxes are abundant in suburban east-coast Australia, they are definitely synanthropic
- but that’s because humans are driving bats into urban areas.
Flying foxes eat nectar and fruit, but many of the nectar-bearing trees they normally
rely on have been cleared.
Fruit bats are haphazard, opportunistic nomads.
That means they migrate to wherever the food is plentiful, without necessarily following
the same route every year.
But with trees in the countryside being felled, this has made cities, with their botanical
gardens and their backyards full of fruit trees, enticing places for flying foxes to
roost.
But this isn’t necessarily a good thing for the bats, or for humans.
For flying foxes it means that they’re being forced to live in areas where they’re thought
of as fruit thieves, as a pest.
Areas where nets, wires, fences and pollution all do harm to them.
And for humans it means those figs you have growing in your backyard may not make it to
ripeness.
But we also know that bats carry viruses that - from time to time - can spread to humans.
Lastly, we could talk about rats, or cockroaches, or spiders - but wouldn’t you rather talk
about kangaroos?
That’s right - while many synanthropic animals are urban, kangaroos are synanthropes that
benefit from human-altered environments outside of cities.
The kangaroo is an animal whose synanthropy doesn’t extend to scavenging human rubbish,
but kangaroos love grass - and if there’s one thing humans do as well as creating rubbish,
its clearing land for agriculture.
While kangaroos prefer to stay out of cities, they still benefit hugely from a human-altered
environment around country towns and regional centres.
Golf courses, parks and farmland all create the perfect pastures for a large, grass-eating
herbivore that can leap fences in a single bound.
So, that’s a few of Australia’s synanthropic animals.
There are heaps of other birds, bats, bugs, and rats that fit into this category too - but
let me know if there are any other different synanthropes around where you live.
Thanks for watching.