A seal has been sent into rehabilitation for an addiction that could prove seriously damaging to her health.
She’s addicted to humans.
The seal in question – an adorable pinniped called Spearmint – has got into the habit of being really very friendly with humans near to where she lives in Devon’s Plymouth Sound.
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So, she’s been taken away to a treatment programme that aims to get her ‘fit and healthy’ to be released back into the wild.
Spearmint was first noticed near to Cawsand Bay in Cornwall about seven months ago, and has become something of a local celebrity, frolicking around with swimmers and paddleboarders – even grabbing onto them at times – and hanging out by a local pub.
While that’s all very wholesome and cute, it’s not good for a wild animal to become too dependent or friendly with humans.
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The plan is to release Spearmint after her treatment programme into the wilds in the remote North of Scotland.
There she’ll be less likely to be tempted once again by the pull of human interaction.
This is the second time that Spearmint has been taken in for rehab, with the first being because of human disturbance.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) are rightly concerned for her safety, and want to make sure she gets the help she needs.
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Residents in Cornwall even had to build a barricade near to a road, so Spearmint didn’t get on it.
Fat lot of good that it did, though; she managed to climb onto a boat and eventually managed to cross the road, too.
Jessica Collins, from Cornwall Seal Group and the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), was the one who rescued her and said that Spearmint is an endangered species and has become too ‘habituated to humans’.
She said: “Although at a young age she needed to be rehabilitated, her interest in humans grew once released as she was fed regularly by tourists.
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“After multiple relocations she found Cawsand Bay, where we were able to control the situation better and keep people away.”
She was captured on 7 April and has been in an RSPCA rehab centre in Somerset since then.
They want to put her back into the wild but want to do it where there’s less chance of human interaction.
If not that, she could have to live in captivity, BBC News reports
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Collins continued: “This poor seal is an example of what happens when humans feed and habituate a wild animal.
“The animal is the one who suffers.”
A representative of the BDMLR said that Spearmint’s behaviour ‘had sadly been affected by people feeding her in the wild, resulting in her becoming overfriendly’.
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The BDMLR statement continued: “The key message throughout has been to give seals space and to not feed them, and we hope this carries through beyond Spearmint’s story and prevent this from happening again to another seal.”
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Tom Wood