Observation as an Antidote to Intolerance

Is fear learned, inherited, or inherent? As far as I can remember, my first instance of fear was borrowed. In another room, my mother screeched at the sight of a beady-eyed, grey gecko slithering up the bathroom door. Heroically, my father jumped to the rescue. Who he was rescuing from whom remains uncertain. I think the fear endured through time. Slithery creatures make me squirm, even to this day; dare I say, I have gotten marginally better? Perhaps I have.

Growing up, I began to bargain for space with one or more geckos occupying the backs of cabinets and flickering tube lights. The safety of my home was mine, and just about any other space, theirs. Territories were marked but seldom respected. As long as they were out of my sight, somewhere “away”, I was okay. That was my mistake.

 

The unfamiliar can be unsettling

A day before I wrote this, The Guardian reported a rise in the killing of snakes in Bangladesh following increased sightings of the Russell’s viper. As the news was sensationalised, panic spread across the landscape, with fearful farming communities killing non-venomous pythons or any snake they encountered.

The Russell’s viper, a protected species under the Wildlife Act in India and Bangladesh, is a venomous snake native to South Asia, often found around open fields and farmlands with abundant prey. Those who have studied the reptile know that the Russell’s viper is a nocturnal, solitary animal and somewhat sluggish, preferring to stay unnoticed as far as possible. It is reluctant to bite, only attacking when provoked, but its venomous bite can have dire consequences.

With limited access to the right information around snakes, the narratives popularised by myths and media, and the concerning statistic of India accounting for roughly half of the world’s snakebite deaths, perhaps no other reptilian group is the subject of as much misinformation and stigma as snakes.

It’s an evolutionary instinct to want to protect ourselves from what we feel can cause us harm. We fear threats we don’t understand. About 90 per cent of over 100 species of snakes found in and around southern India are non-venomous. The same fear we have for snakes and consequent bias extends to other species, ranging from rock bees to spiders and other insects. Unfortunately, the accepted blanket solution for a species that may be “perceived” as harmful is simply doing away with them. Moving species away from where they are found, to a forest or “elsewhere”, even if well-intentioned, can often cause them a painful death. 

Observation as a fix for fear

A few weeks ago, while recording a conversation on urban coexistence on the outskirts of Mysuru at The Liana Trust, a research and outreach centre founded by herpetologist Gerry Martin, we steered into the idea of “Where does conservation begin?”. Gerry has an interesting take. When we look at birds, we don’t bucket them all as one species, and so should be the case with snakes. If birdwatching can be a thing, why not “snake-watching”? When encountering a snake in our vicinity, we reach out for binoculars over a snake catcher.

Observation is not a passive activity; it is quite the opposite. It is a way to interact with the world without interfering with it. It is an active engagement, a keen interest to care. When a snake slithers into our backyard, to observe it is to ask ourselves to make space, step away. See how distinctive its patterns are, how it doesn’t “just” slither but moves in different ways, how it interacts with the ecosystem — our shared space. Or how the house gecko hunts mosquitoes off the dim lampshade; how bees, crucial pollinators in the urban ecosystem, painstakingly build their hive over weeks.

“Watching” any species asks that curiosity be extended to the less glamorous, often misunderstood species in our surroundings. So perhaps observation is the beginning of conservation. To begin coexisting is to begin to understand; to begin to understand is to begin to observe. To begin to observe is to replace fear and impatience with curiosity and restraint. 

To conserve is to remember to care

Why does observation matter? It is a trait counterintuitive to the affected control and hustle of the present day, asking to engage with an open mind. For young children, in particular, it has the capacity to form the building blocks for how they see wildlife while growing up. Maybe as they begin to observe, they’ll notice how plastic cords are increasingly built into the structures of bird nests. How dumpsters are sources of food for animals. How the sounds of the metro are everywhere, but the variety of bird calls is limited. It is said that keeping something in your mind is a way of keeping it alive. The societal extinction of species is when an extant species is pushed faster towards the path of biological extinction as it drops from people’s consciousness. Gerry mentions that the diversity of snakes found in a city like Bangalore has significantly reduced compared to the late 80s or early 90s. Across Bangalore’s lakes, a drop of over 70 per cent of wetland bird species was recorded between 1990 and 2020. How long was it before someone noticed a bird no longer flocked the lake; one by one, as the numbers dropped, when did someone notice that the numbers had fallen too low? 

To begin to know something is to begin to care for it. Increasingly, citizen science initiatives are encouraging communities of curious observers to connect with like-minded people. They try to invite more people into the conversations around conservation and biodiversity. From snakes to bats to dragonflies, people are sharing their observations, helping expand the knowledge and database on species.

Species, especially those that have been historically misunderstood or neglected, deserve urgent attention and protection. In the world beyond, our “gated community”, the environment, and all the species that belong to it endure tremendous strain while adapting to evolving landscapes. The health of our cities depends on the health of the urban ecosystem, in which even the smallest creatures have a significant role to play. To keep an open mind to the many wild neighbours that share our spaces is to welcome them in, gates or no gates.

So, the next time a beady-eyed gecko slithers up the wall, I can’t promise I won’t flinch, but I can pause for a bit and take a moment to observe it. That’s as good a start as any.