Cruel Not Cute: Wild Animal Selfies on Vacation
The true cost of these 'unique' experiences involves animal cruelty — our tips to travel kind and protect animals
Vienna, 24 June 2025 – A selfie with a tiger, riding an elephant, swimming with dolphins – FOUR PAWS warns that what seems to be a unique experience for tourists is actual animal cruelty. To perform unnatural tricks or interact with visitors, wild animals are kept in cruel conditions and even subjected to mental and physical violence. Global animal welfare organisation FOUR PAWS provides ten tips to travel kind and protect animals this holiday season.
The fate of animals exploited in tourist attractions is grim. “These interactions are highly unnatural. Even if you don’t see their pain, animals are under immense stress. Elephants are brutally broken to make them compliant. Lion cubs are snatched from their mothers. Once they are too big for selfies, they are sold as living targets in canned hunting. Horses and donkeys carrying tourists are often suffering for hours in unbearable heat, with no shade, rest or enough water,” she adds.
To best protect animals, FOUR PAWS recommends to:
- Enjoy animals in the wild: Wild animals are best observed in their natural habitat from a safe and respectful distance. Be aware of tour providers, who also offer cruel trophy hunting.
- Just look, don’t touch: Holding or touching wildlife is never kind to the animal, despite your best intentions.
- No feeding policy: Feeding wild animals harms their ability to find food and teaches them to get dangerously close to humans. This can put local communities at risk.
- Avoid animal selfies: Don’t support businesses charging for photos with animals. Your perfect shot comes with life-long suffering for them. Tigers or lions often get heavily sedated to pose with tourists and spend their life in cruel captivity.
- Only visit genuine sanctuaries: Do your online research before your visit. At true sanctuaries, animal welfare comes first, and no direct interaction between animals and visitors is allowed. If the place offers selfies, petting, feeding, animal shows or is involved in breeding and trade, all alarm bells should be ringing.
- Say no to animal rides: Avoid activities like elephant, camel, donkey, and horse rides. They often endure harsh training and poor living conditions with little feed, water and rest.
- Skip animal shows: Performances involving wild animals, such as circuses or marine parks, are animal cruelty and cause immense suffering due to inappropriate keeping conditions and unnatural behaviour.
- Avoid dubious souvenirs: Don’t buy trinkets or other products made of animal parts (like exotic leather, tortoise shell, ivory, corals, fur, etc.). Purchasing such products encourages poaching of animals from the wild and spurs the extinction of endangered species. It can also lead to hefty fines and even prison sentences, if the animal is protected.
- Steer clear of dubious specialties: Avoid restaurants and street vendors offering dog or cat meat, bush meat or endangered species, such as shark fins. Many of these animals endure cruel treatment to end up on your plate.
- Stay at a safe distance: Be aware that many strays and wild animals are fearful of humans and can attack when approached – so keep your distance for your own safety, as the transmission of rabies and other diseases is a possible risk.
Vera Mair
(she/her)PR International Officer
+43 (0) 664 409 05 16
VIER PFOTEN International
Linke Wienzeile 236
1150 Vienna, Austria
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FOUR PAWS is the global animal welfare organisation for animals under direct human influence, which reveals suffering, rescues animals in need and protects them. Founded in 1988 in Vienna by Heli Dungler and friends, the organisation advocates for a world where humans treat animals with respect, empathy and understanding. The sustainable campaigns and projects of FOUR PAWS focus on companion animals including stray dogs and cats, farm animals and wild animals – such as bears, big cats and orangutans – kept in inappropriate conditions as well as in disaster and conflict zones. With offices in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Kosovo, the Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, the UK, the USA and Vietnam as well as sanctuaries for rescued animals in eleven countries, FOUR PAWS provides rapid help and long-term solutions. www.four-paws.org