Cities Are Not Just Ours
Urban sprawl is expanding into habitats across the planet. Forests and fields are paved over, rivers channelled, wetlands drained. But animals don’t simply disappear because humans have decided the land belongs to us. Many species make their way into cities, finding food, shelter, and even new niches in the artificial environments we build. Hawks perch on telephone poles, raccoons raid bins, deer eat garden shrubs, snakes sun themselves on suburban paths.
The question is not whether animals will live in urban spaces — they already do. The question is whether humans will tolerate their presence.
A recent study in People and Nature looked at how residents of metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia — one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. — view the animals they share space with. More than a thousand people were surveyed about their attitudes, emotions, and experiences with local wildlife. The findings reveal just how much human prejudice and cultural baggage shapes the lives of wild animals trying to survive in the concrete sprawl.
Who’s welcome, who isn’t?
The researchers asked about a range of species: from hummingbirds and owls to coyotes and snakes. The results were depressingly predictable.
Loved: Hummingbirds topped the list. People “strongly liked” them, wanted more of them, and expressed excitement at seeing them. Deer, rabbits, owls, hawks, turtles, and squirrels also enjoyed relatively positive attitudes.
Tolerated at arm’s length: Opossums, bats, foxes, and raccoons sat in the middle — neither liked nor strongly disliked.
Despised: Snakes, coyotes, and bobcats were met with fear, disgust, or hostility. People wanted their numbers reduced.
In other words, animals deemed “cute,” “beautiful,” or “useful” are tolerated, while predators or those associated with cultural fear are marked for exclusion. This isn’t coexistence — it’s a hierarchy of life dictated by human preference.
Fear, disgust, and prejudice disguised as “conflict”
One of the most striking aspects of the study is that actual dangerous encounters were vanishingly rare. Less than one percent of respondents had ever been threatened or injured by an animal. The most common “conflicts” were raccoons or opossums knocking over bins, or deer and rabbits nibbling landscaping.
Yet dislike ran strongest not against the animals causing minor messes, but against predators and snakes. Fear and disgust — emotions shaped by centuries of myth, religion, and media — did more to drive intolerance than lived experience.
Bats are tied to vampire stories. Snakes to biblical evil. Coyotes to sensationalist news about “attacks” that are almost always exaggerated. These cultural fictions ripple through attitudes and harden into policy. It is easier to justify killing what you fear.
Mutualism versus domination
The survey also measured what the researchers call “wildlife value orientations.” Two worldviews emerged:
1. Domination: Other animals exist for humans to use. Their worth is measured by utility.
2. Mutualism: Other animals are part of a shared community. They are kin, not commodities.
Unsurprisingly, people with mutualistic beliefs were far more tolerant of “unpopular” species like coyotes, snakes, and opossums. Those with domination beliefs leaned toward intolerance.
This matters because our legal and political systems are built on domination. Wildlife agencies exist not to protect animals for their own sake but to “manage resources” — a telling phrase that treats living beings as stockpiles for human use. Conservation is always framed in terms of how animals serve humans or ecosystems humans care about.
If animals are only tolerated when they please us, what we are practising is not coexistence but conditional permission — and permission can always be revoked.
Self-efficacy and the illusion of control
Another factor was “self-efficacy” — people’s belief in their ability to keep themselves, their families, and pets safe. Interestingly, those who felt confident in managing risks were more tolerant of certain species, like hawks and owls. But in some cases the opposite was true: people who doubted their ability to control raccoons or snakes actually showed more tolerance, perhaps accepting that these animals were simply part of the landscape.
This exposes another truth: intolerance often grows out of the human obsession with control. The more we think we can dominate and manage every square inch of life, the more we lash out when an animal refuses to obey the rules of our property lines.
Trust in institutions — or lack thereof
The study expected that trust in the state wildlife agency would predict tolerance. It didn’t. People were neutral, unsure, or disengaged. Many had never even interacted with the agency.
That might sound like a small detail, but it highlights a deeper issue: wildlife agencies are designed to serve political and economic interests, not animals. When people distrust them, it is not necessarily bad news for wildlife. It may instead open the door to grassroots efforts that bypass state “management” altogether.
Demographics and prejudice
Patterns emerged along demographic lines:
▫️ Women were less tolerant of snakes, foxes, and owls.
▫️ Older respondents were less tolerant of coyotes and rabbits but more tolerant of bats.
▫️ More educated respondents were more tolerant of bats.
▫️ Black respondents were less tolerant of foxes but more tolerant of squirrels.
▫️ Hispanic respondents were less tolerant of owls and rabbits.
What these results show is not innate difference but the way cultural narratives, histories, and even urban planning shape people’s relationships with animals. In Atlanta, legacies of segregation and environmental injustice mean that minority communities often live with fewer green spaces and different kinds of exposure to wildlife. Yet the study found no evidence that they experienced more conflict, undercutting lazy assumptions that intolerance is “cultural.”
The real problem is structural: cities designed around cars, property values, and gentrification, where free living animals are seen as an intruders rather than a neighbours.
Why tolerance matters
Why does this matter? Because intolerance doesn’t just remain an attitude. It translates into policy.
When residents report “nuisance” animals, agencies trap and kill them. When deer eat too many garden plants, culls are authorised. When coyotes are seen too often, they’re shot. Snakes are crushed under car tyres or shovels.
Urban carnivores and snakes are particularly targeted, but these animals play vital ecological roles: rodent populations, cycling nutrients, and maintaining balance. The ecosystems of our cities, however artificial, rely on them. To drive them out is to further sterilise environments already stripped by concrete.
But beyond ecology, there is a moral question. If we accept that other animals are individuals with their own lives, then their presence in urban spaces is not a problem to be solved — it is a reality to be respected. They have as much claim to the city as we do.
The emotional frontier
The study makes clear that the biggest predictor of tolerance is not rational calculation of risk or even direct experience. It is emotion. Fear, disgust, annoyance — these feelings shape whether an animal is accepted or targeted. Conversely, interest, compassion, and excitement drive tolerance.
That is both sobering and hopeful. Sobering because it shows how prejudice, once ingrained, can fuel extermination campaigns even when conflict is minimal. Hopeful because emotions can be shifted. People can be moved to curiosity instead of fear, compassion instead of disgust.
But doing so requires dismantling myths. It requires rejecting the narratives that paint predators as villains and snakes as sinister. It requires reframing wildlife not as ornaments or pests but as fellow city-dwellers.
Toward genuine coexistence
Conservation bodies often respond to conflict by promoting technical fixes: secure your bins, fence your garden, drive carefully where deer cross. These may help, but they miss the point. The deeper work is cultural.
We must stop asking which animals are “friend” and which are “foe.” That binary is itself the problem. Animals do not exist to be categorised according to our convenience. They exist for themselves.
True coexistence means rejecting the domination mindset. It means designing cities with space for all species, not just those we find pretty or profitable. It means recognising that fear is not a justification for killing, and annoyance is not a reason for eviction.
It also means confronting the way we construct tolerance itself. To “tolerate” implies superiority — as if humans are magnanimously allowing other animals to live. What is needed is not tolerance but respect, reciprocity, and justice.
Conclusion: the city is theirs too
By 2050, nearly 70% of humans will live in urban areas. That expansion will not stop wildlife from being there too. The choice before us is simple: will we treat them as invaders to be controlled, or as neighbours to be respected?
The Atlanta study shows that attitudes, emotions, and beliefs drive our responses far more than real risks or conflicts. It also shows that the animals most in need of protection — carnivores and snakes — are those we most often despise. If we do not confront that prejudice, urban conservation will collapse into little more than curation: protecting songbirds while exterminating predators.
Justice demands more. Justice demands that other animals are recognised as rightful inhabitants of the spaces we share. Not “friends” when convenient, not “foes” when inconvenient, but fellow beings with their own claim to the world. The city is not just ours. It never was.