After baby dolphin, next victim of selfie-takers are peacocks in China zoo

Next to spending too much time on social media sites, taking selfies could also be fatal as the number of selfie-takers falling off cliffs or river or crashing their vehicles prove. However, in a span of just days, it turns out the even animal could be in danger too because of selfies.

Mashable reports that two peacocks at the Yunnan Wild Animal Park in southwest China died because the zoo visitors picked up the avian and roughly handled the bird with the beautiful and colourful feathers. The visitors did not only took selfies with the bewildered birds, they also violently pulled out the peacock’s feathers as souvenir.

The photo of the zoo visitors holding the peacock became viral when it was posted on Sina Weibo, the equivalent of Twitter in China. Operators of the Yunnan park confirmed on Sunday that the peacock-grabbing incident happened on Feb 12 despite zoo employees telling the visitors not to handle the peacocks.

To lure the birds, which normally do not come near people, the visitors gave the peacocks food and then grabbed the avian by the tail. Zoo workers who witnessed the incident rushed to stop the visitors. However, 30 minutes after the incident, a 5-year-old peacock died of fright, according to the zoo spokesperson named Bai.

No charges has been filed yet by the zoo. A Kunming East Hospital veterinarian, Dr Li, confirmed that peacocks could die because of fright or suffer heart attacks if exposed to big shocks.

The incident happened just days after a photo of a baby dolphin being held by beachgoers in Argentina become viral because the young mammal died of dehydration after being out of the water for a long time. After the selfies, the crowed at Santa Terisita beach left the baby Franciscana dolphin on the shore motionless.

The Argentine Wildlife Foundation criticised the selfie-taking with the dolphin and reminded people to return it to the water if they spot one to avert the mammal’s dehydration and death.

On Monday, CSMonitor reported a similar incident in Florida wherein a man is seen dragging a small shark caught in the Atlantic Ocean. He pulled the writhing fish by its tail on Palm Beach, pinned it on the sand and posed while a small crowd tool selfies using their mobile phones. A 1-minute, 42-second video, posted on Facebook by a TV anchor from WPTV, showed another man later dragging the shark back into the ocean to release the fish.