The truth behind "cute" animal videos

"This is actually a very, very stressful situation for the stingray."  Here's the ugly truth behind the internet's "cute" animal videos...

Transcript

00:00How do you tickle a fish?

00:27One of the first things they teach you in scuba diving is to not touch the animals.

00:31You run the risk of hurting yourself, but more importantly you have a chance of hurting

00:34the animal as well.

00:36Now I know it looks like this ray is laughing when this guy tickles it, but that is a classic

00:40case of anthropomorphism, which is where we assign human characteristics and behaviors

00:45to animals and non-human objects.

00:49In reality, this is a very, very stressful situation for the ray.

00:53Think about it like this.

00:55This ray is supposed to be breathing water and now it is up in air and somebody is forcing

01:01it to open its mouth and let out all the water that it needs and instead replace that with

01:06air.

01:14So remember guys, all of these videos that we see online of animals doing cute things

01:18may look fun and harmless to us, but in reality it may be a traumatic experience for the animal.

01:25If you knew that tickling a slow loris is actually torturing it.

01:36This loris has her arms up because she is terrified and is trying to protect herself

01:41by gathering venom from a gland inside her elbow.

01:50But slow lorises are suffering terribly as a result of the pet trade fueled by these

01:55videos.

01:57Before a slow loris is sold as a pet, its teeth are removed without an aesthetic.

02:04Lorises are smuggled in dark, overcrowded, airless containers alongside the bodies of

02:10other lorises that have died.