Our relationship with animals is so toxic

It’s become toxic on one side only though... ours. We love animals as long as they’re fluffy, cuddly and compliant because they have been domesticated, such as dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, mice and so on, but we want to eradicate those that inconvenience us, even in the slightest.

There are people who want to murder foxes for no other reason than that they kill other animals to eat. Someone should point out to them that this is what predators do.

Some people want to kill squirrels because they come into their gardens and eat the food they put out for birds. Gardeners love to kill moles because they have the nerve to create little mounds of earth in their lawns.

People move to the seaside and then want to kill seagulls because they’re noisy or swoop down to eat their chips on the pier.

There are people who deliberately run down wild animals on roads. Badgers have been put under a death sentence by the Government because they may infect cattle with TB. People hate pigeons because they have cleverly adapted to city life but still leave droppings.

Posh people go out in the countryside and shoot birds and animals for fun, and cruel ruthless people make animals fight each other to the death for fun.

We have relentlessly eradicated much of our flying wildlife, through poisonous farming and gardening practices that kill our increasingly precious insects and birds or by driving, our ever increasing and ever faster cars splattering them to death on roads forging their way through their countryside.

In this country we have lost 40 million birds over the past 50 years but just this month a council in Norfolk put mesh netting along cliffs to prevent sand martins nesting there. The birds had flown halfway round the world from Africa to return to their nesting site, exhausted, only to find their site thoughtlessly barred to them. Many will now fail to breed. The council is now having the netting removed after consulting the RSPB.

Last month, housing developers were criticised for wrapping plastic mesh around trees and hedgerows to stop birds nesting in Lincolnshire. Not only did the plastic look hideous but it was also a cynical ploy by the developer to flout the law preventing the destruction of wild bird nests and speed up the building process.

People in other parts of the world also find animals inconvenient. In one recent story, South Africans went to court to have a bull elephant killed because it barged through new fences they had put up and trampled on their land. The problem was that the elephant was there first and the enclosed land formed part of his migratory route. Luckily, this time, the elephant was saved by activists, who had him sedated him and moved him elsewhere.

We just don’t like it when animals behave like, well, animals. We underestimate their power and defensive aggression, and particularly their killer instincts.

Suckered by TV and online footage of beautiful big cats, people mistakenly believe that the wild animals we cage in zoos have somehow become partially domesticated and therefore feel warm and friendly towards us, like pets. Recently, a woman ignored safety notices and climbed over a fence at a zoo in Arizona to take a selfie of a jaguar and was mauled by it.

Last week, a man also ignored warnings at a South African zoo and put his arm through the fencing to stroke a lioness, only for another to clamp her jaws on his arm, right down to the bone. Over the weekend, a 75-year-old man who kept exotic creatures was killed by a cassowary, the world’s most dangerous bird at 6ft tall, which attacked him with its four-inch claws.

Even so-called “experts” fool themselves about their ability to “understand” some of the world’s most ferocious wild animals. The Australian conservationist and TV star Steve Irwin, nicknamed the Crocodile Hunter, believed his affinity with killer reptiles would stop them attacking his baby daughter as he dangled her over their jaws on television. But his instincts about animal behaviour proved to be the death of him: he was pierced in the heart by the barb of a stingray while filming a documentary.

I fear in the future we will become more ruthless in our destruction of wildlife as space becomes ever more precious. If we don’t respect and value wild creatures in this country and elsewhere in the world now, all of our fear about climate change will be pointless because we will be preserving a barren earth. I hope we can learn to live with wild animals more easily and with more compassion so that we give them the space they need. But I’m not holding my breath.