Leopard, Mumbai, India
Two yellow orbs shine back at you in the darkness, as something catches the beam from your headlights in its eyes. Moments later, they’re gone. Should you find yourself driving along the back streets of Mumbai after dark, you might just have glimpsed a leopard.
Against the odds, the world’s most cosmopolitan big cat has gained a pawhold in the megacity, home to more than 20 million people.
By day, the leopards mostly hide up in Sanjay Gandhi National Park, the green heart of the city, where researchers counted 47 adult cats and eight cubs in 2018. At night, they prowl the neighbouring alleys and backyards, picking off stray dogs, and feral pigs and goats.
Should we be surprised? The labels ‘city’ and ‘countryside’ mean nothing to Mumbai’s leopards, or to Aspen’s black bears, Stockholm’s beavers and Beijing’s weasels. Wild animals just want a safe place to live, where they can find food and shelter, and perhaps raise a family.
In the urban jungle, you’re rarely far from exciting wildlife. Here, we search the back streets and scour the sewers to introduce you to some of our wilder metropolitan neighbours.
Sika deer, Nara, Japan
If wildlife is to thrive in our cities, it often all comes down to cultural norms – what we deem acceptable – rather than just being a question of whether there’s enough food, water or shelter. Take the sika deer that roam Japanese streets. Deer are not small animals by any stretch, yet in the temple city of Nara and on the touristy island of Miyajima, it’s considered perfectly okay for them to mingle with pedestrians and wander around cafes and shops.
In part, this may be due to a lingering sense of tradition, since the country’s Shinto religion held deer to be sacred. It also makes economic sense, as local businesses appreciate the hordes of phone-toting visitors keen to snap each other feeding the ‘pavement Bambis’. At any rate, the welcome does not extend to Japan’s rural hinterland, where farmers are quite happy to persecute deer as they see fit.
Water monitor, Bangkok, Thailand
Under every city is a maze of pipes, storm drains and sewers, where you might expect to meet rats and mice, spiders and cockroaches. Sometimes, however, the subterranean fauna can be rather larger. Bangkok is visited by several hundred water monitors, huge lizards in the same family as Komodo dragons that may be as long as an adult human is tall and will eat pretty much anything. They have learned that sneaking into sewers and drains is a great way to get around the Thai capital, as seen in BBC Two series Cities: Nature’s New Wild. Unfortunately, water monitors are traditionally thought to bring bad luck in Thailand, so they are heavily persecuted. It is the job of the Bangkok fire service to try to relocate any big or overly bold individuals, though the monitors keep coming back.
Racoon, Toronto, Canada
Before the urbanisation of North America, raccoons scampered mainly through deciduous woodland. With much of their former habitat gone, these excellent climbers began denning in attics instead, even in city centres. In 2018, one enterprising raccoon went viral by scaling a 25-storey Minnesota high-rise. After its 20-hour ascent, streamed live, the animal was rescued on the roof.
Intelligent, omnivorous, adaptable, nimble with their hands… raccoons share so many human traits, no wonder they feel at home in our built environment. The 5kg bandit-masked carnivores are regarded as the ultimate urban pest by many North Americans. Not only do the ‘trash pandas’ tip over wheelie bins and dig up flowerbeds in search of food, but those dextrous digits can also raid backyard birdfeeders, pinch ornamental carp from ponds, open fridge doors in unattended kitchens and filch picnics in parks. Five years ago, Toronto – which has been called the raccoon capital of the world – spent US$24 million on a ‘moonshot’ bid to design a raccoon-resistant bin. Yep, you guessed right: the raccoons cracked it.
Mexican free-tailed bat, Austin
A million – yes, a million – bats roost on a single bridge in this self-styled ‘Bat City’. Congress Avenue Bridge, which spans Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin, Texas, could almost have been designed with bats in mind. When it was renovated in 1980, small bat-sized gaps were added to the structure and it was not long before the local free-tailed bats began roosting there. Now the bridge is close to capacity and provides a perfect case study of sustainable urban wildlife tourism.
On balmy summer evenings, the bridge is packed with tourists, while boats and kayaks throng the water below, as everyone enjoys the dusk spectacle of clouds of bats swirling into the sky. Within about 45 minutes, the bats have dispersed to hunt insects, returning to their waiting pups by dawn. Numbers peak in mid-August, when the annual Bat Fest brings a carnival atmosphere to the bridge.
Ants, Manhattan, New York, USA
It’s not every day that you find a species new to science while on your lunch break in the midst of a bustling city. But when biology students working with professor Rob Dunn – a leading authority on ants, and BBC Wildlife contributor – spotted an interesting ant off Broadway, they took it back to the lab. It didn’t match any described species, so for now – until formally named – goes by the moniker ‘ManhattAnt’.
The ManhattAnt is one of numerous New York ants attracting scientists’ interest. A study of the foraging behaviour in the pavement ant, for instance, estimated that each year the ants of a single street cart off food equivalent to the weight of 60,000 hot dogs. Dunn’s team discovered that urban pavement ants had different features to their country counterparts, which could be due to diverging diets.
Ants aren’t the only city-dwelling animals to show genetic differences, either. The London Underground has a unique subspecies of mosquito, while New York’s white-footed mice are distinct from those in the countryside.
Wild boar, Berlin, Germany
Of all the wildlife stories that stole our hearts during 2020’s grim spring lockdown, one stands out for sheer silliness: the widely circulated photos of a female wild boar called Elsa and her stripy piglets romping through a Berlin park, with a nude sunbather in hot pursuit. Moments earlier the cheeky swine, accustomed to handouts, had swiped a plastic bag containing the naked man’s laptop. There may be several salutary lessons here, chief among them that feeding boar is not a good idea.
As in Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean, offerings of peanuts and other treats only worsen the conflict between boar and people in the leafy German capital, where an estimated 3,000–5,000 of the wild pigs now live. Boar cause traffic accidents and create a mess; they leave lawns and road verges looking as if an excavator has run riot. The earth-moving and trampling mean boar are valuable ecosystem engineers, but in an urban setting that doesn’t cut the mustard, and Berlin’s municipal authorities cull hundreds of boar a year.
Blue and gold macaw, Campo Grande
Urban parrots are a growing phenomenon, bringing raucous squawks and flashes of colour to cityscapes worldwide. Most of the exotic arrivals are escaped pets or their descendants, and not all populations become self-sustaining, but Campo Grande’s blue-and-gold macaws turned up under their own steam and are thriving.
Campo Grande, in Brazil’s midwestern state of Mato Grosso, is the gateway to the vast Pantanal wetland – 10 times larger than Florida’s Everglades. A severe drought in the Pantanal in 1999 forced groups of macaws to disperse in search of food, and these birds seem to be the origins of today’s urban population.
Neiva Guedes, president of the Instituto Arara Azul (Hyacinth Macaw Institute), says that according to the latest survey, there are about 700 macaws in the city. A total of 259 nests were recorded in the 2019 breeding season, roughly from July to December. Campo Grande residents are so taken by their flashy new neighbours that they erect nestboxes to encourage them, and the city’s proud new nickname is ‘Capital of the Macaws’.
Peregrine falcon, London, UK
From the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge to Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia and the Houses of Parliament, dozens of city landmarks across the northern hemisphere have a pair of peregrine falcons in residence. To these falcons, any tall building or tower is a substitute cliff, ideal for nesting and roosting.
Prey is plentiful in built-up areas, especially pigeons, crows and other medium-sized birds. The nocturnal city glow benefits the peregrines by enabling them to hunt after dark, too.
There is one other factor at play. City peregrines are relatively safe from persecution, certainly compared to rural areas, which is why the UK’s urban peregrine population exceeds 100 breeding pairs. This wildlife success story was unimaginable 60 years ago, when pesticide poisoning brought peregrines to the brink of extinction.
