Have you seen the cute lemur video? There’s a high chance. After all, the video has been played on Facebook more than 60 million times—and who can blame you anyway? The little primate gesticulates so comprehensibly, bossing the children for more backscratching.
You may have wondered why the lemur let the kids pet it. Perhaps you thought it was living nearby and naturally became familiar with people. Or was it perhaps rescued in some fashion?
The truth is, as far as we know, much less heart-warming.
The lemur’s mother was killed in the illegal bush meat trade and the baby was taken as an illegal pet, according to Lisa Gould, veteran lemur researcher with the University of Victoria, who explained the backstory in a comment to the video on Facebook.
The sweet animal-video-turned-sour perpetuates what appears to be a trend of viral publicity misrepresenting wildlife issues or even making the problems worse.
For example, after Pixar blockbuster “Finding Nemo” debuted in 2003, U.S. imports of ocellaris clownfish jumped 30 percent, possibly because the movie’s main character was modeled after the fish. Conservationists sounded the alarm, saying the movie made the decline in the clownfish population worse.
With sequel “Finding Dory” coming to movie theaters, experts worry a similar fate awaits the blue tang, the fish Dory’s character is modeled after.
