Pigeons on the roof

 People like to boast that we are also animal lovers. Animals are not only a source of food for people, but we often also accept them into our home environment as our pets. We also love them in nature and even around our homes. Thus, wild animals or animals that we still encounter in their natural environment have slowly stopped being afraid of humans because they have stopped chasing or killing them.

Thus, humans have slowly created the conditions for wild animals to approach their homes or even start to share them. We are probably all familiar with pigeons on roofs, balconies and monuments, and at least sparrows in the bushes in the nearest park, if not near our home. Nesting sites for so-called wild birds in attics or even facades are also possible. A wild animal is a wild animal that chooses the best living environment for itself.

For wild animals, proximity to humans also means a source of food. We humans have become too fond of feeding at least wild birds, which still include wild ducks, pigeons and sparrows. Human habitation, even in urban environments, has become tempting for crows, swallows, blackbirds and even most migratory birds. People have become kind-hearted not only to domestic animals, but also to wild ones, and have already set up feeders for poor birds in city centers or on buildings. Thus, the gap between the concepts of wild and domestic animals has slowly disappeared. But we have also forgotten that wild animals are not under constant veterinary supervision, as is supposed to apply to domestic pets, stables and chicken coops and so on.

First, we humans got used to birdsong even in urban areas. Some people are even bothered by their singing. Only then did their droppings on balconies, terraces, roofs, monuments, cars and even on our shoes begin to bother us. Only later did the fear of transmitting diseases from wild animals to humans reappear, at least with the appearance of bird flu and influenza, if we had not already heard of the so-called avian influenza.

Now, people have in their environment, including urban ones, the singing of wild birds, their droppings through which we can also become infected, and of course with this also the fear of infectious diseases that the National Institutes of Public Health warn us about. And very slowly we will have to get used to not feeding wild animals, to removing them from the vicinity of our homes again, and to actually persecuting them again.

Mother Nature has her own laws of survival that apply to all living beings, including all pathogenic organisms for humans and other organisms, and the so-called natural selection, to which we, as humans, can also be subject in our everyday lives.