In the opening scene of I Am Legend, Will Smith’s character speeds through New York in a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, but he’s in a New York not reminiscent of present-day. The streets are void of crowds, the roads are covered in vegetation, the sounds of traffic are muted, and a city known for never sleeping is very - still. This post-apocalyptic movie gives its depiction of what a metropolis would look like years after people were removed. In the absence of crowds, nature finds its way to return to places that can be thought of as exclusively for people. Like some of the demarcation zones during the Lebanese Civil War, an interesting juxtaposition is created when plants start enveloping concrete buildings. In the time since the shelter-in-place orders were given since the coronavirus outbreak, we’ve seen evidence of nature creeping back into urban landscapes in the form of wild animals.

Wild turkeys roaming around a school in downtown Oakland, raccoons playing in San Felipe, Panama, Boars in the streets of Bar(th)elona, and coyotes in San Francisco are all occurrences that people aren’t used to but are becoming more frequent now that there aren’t people outdoors deterring wild animals from encroaching. One town that has seen a group of wild animals sauntering through the streets is the coastal town of Llandudno, Wales. A group of Kashmiri goats, which normally remain up in the mountain range surrounding the village, has been taking advantage of the empty roads and unmonitored hedges.

Some of the stories about how the pandemic is affecting wildlife, however, have turned out to be hoaxes. Rumors of dolphins being seen in the Venice canals because of a lack of boat traffic was disproven as well as the story of a drunken elephant stumbling around the streets in China’s Yunnan province. One of the funnier hoaxes was about how the Russian government was using lions and tigers to enforce their shelter-in-place orders. That one seemed a little too fantastical to me from the get-go, yet I still saw it reposted on social media.

Wild animals are finding their way into urban areas because of a lack of human presence, but we’ve also seen a shift in behavior for the animals who have become reliant on human interaction for food. Heading into the summer months means a jump in tourism for Thailand. The monkey population outside of a popular Thai temple, Prang Sam Yod, has become increasingly aggressive with a lack of visitor handouts evidenced by a video I came across on social media where some food was tossed into the crowd of monkeys and a frenzy erupts. Another group of animals that are at least in part dependent upon people for food is the Sika Deer in Nara Park, Japan. The Sika Deer were once considered sacred and killing one was punishable by death. This group of deer supplements a part of their diet with specific rice crackers called Shika-senbei that visitors can purchase at a handful of places in town and then feed to the deer. With crowds dwindling because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Sika Deer have been starting to wander into the nearby town to find food, and possibly confront people about their lack of rice crackers (hehe). How much more will we see wildlife in the cities in the coming days/months?