싱가포르의 도시 야생동물: 수달, 자연, 그리고 도시 생활

### 싱가포르 야생 동물의 매혹: 개인적인 여행
* 🌆 싱가포르에 처음 도착했을 때 저는 **우뚝 솟은 고층 빌딩과 다양한 야생동물로 가득한 울창한 열대우림**이 특징인 깨끗하고 활기찬 도시 분위기에 매료되었습니다.
* 🐍 첫 주 동안 저는 **킹코브라와 그물무늬 비단뱀의 극적인 만남**을 비롯해 특별한 사건을 목격했고, **천산갑이 캠퍼스 계단을 자연스럽게 걸어 내려오는 모습**에 감탄했습니다.
* 🐦 심지어 임대할 아파트를 알아보는 동안 야생 앵무새가 제 어깨에 내려앉아 **"싱가포르의 모든 것이 놀랍다"**는 제 인상을 더욱 확고히 해주었습니다.
* 수달, 특히 비샨 가족은 **싱가포르 수로 오염으로 수십 년 동안 자취를 감췄던 수달**이 놀랍게도 다시 돌아와 관심을 모았습니다.
* 🌊 성공적인 정화 활동 덕분에 수로는 오염된 환경에서 물고기의 번성하는 서식지로 변했고, 수달이 다시 이 지역으로 돌아와 **현재 약 12개 가족이 싱가포르에 서식**하고 있습니다.
* 📸 헌신적인 수달 관찰자는 수달을 관찰하는 데 중요한 역할을 하며, **자연과의 교감을 통해 대중의 환경 인식과 감사를 증진**할 수 있습니다.
* 🌳 **100만 그루 이상의 나무를 심고 10분 이내에 공원을 이용할 수 있도록 하는 등 녹지 공간을 강화하려는 싱가포르의 노력**은 도시 생활과 야생 동물의 공존이라는 광범위한 비전을 반영합니다.
* 🦁 궁극적으로 싱가포르는 **도시 개발과 풍부한 생물 다양성의 독특한 조화**를 구현하여 도시를 단순한 콘크리트 정글이라는 관념에 도전하고 잠재적인 야생동물 피난처로 제시합니다.

장난기 가득한 수달을 비롯한 싱가포르의 활기찬 야생동물은 도시 생활과 자연이 독특한 조화를 이루는 모습을 보여줍니다.

When I first uh moved to Singapore, I thought it was magical. Here's this clean, bright, pretty, well-run city with twisted tall skyscrapers made of steel and glass that's rising out of what's left of a tropical rainforest. And it wasn't just tropical rainforests; it was animals walking around. And you see sunbirds flitting amongst the flowers. You see hornbills hopping from branch to branch on campus. You see kugos and Sumatran flying dragons and paradise tree snakes gliding from tree to tree. All of this was just so amazing to me. The first week I came to Singapore, there was a fight during the day out in the open between a king cobra and a reticulated python on the campus of NTU. That same first week, uh, there was video of, I'm trying to think which way I'm looking, there is video of a pangolin walking down the stairway between Yen us and rc4. I started to uh look for a place to

live and I went to a flat that I wanted to rent. I walked out on the balcony, and a parakeet flew, a wild parakeet flew, and landed on my shoulder. The property manager asked me, Are you going to take the flat? and I said, Of course I am. A little bird told me to. You know, this was just amazing to me. Everything about Singapore was just incredible to me. When I first moved here, I kept wondering to myself, You know, what is this place with these tall, twisted skyscrapers? And at the same time, we have brightly colored birds flying, hornbills that are eyeing people on campus, gliding lizards, and kugos and snakes. It was just amazing to me. To me, it was utterly fantastical, and everything everywhere was otter. So, the otter started to blow up on social media just before I came to Singapore in 2015, and one family in particular started to get a lot of attention, the Bishan family, because it lived downtown near all the famous landmarks of

Singapore, and so they were getting a lot of attention, and this was really exciting to me. Um, and this is a video from 2016. These are phone videos for the most part. Uh, but this is the Bishan mom, and these are her second brood of pups. Now, we never get this close to Otter anymore, so I deserve some scolding. Those are some Y and US students and an otter watch, and if you look upstream, you'll see the Bishan dad with a fish, and those whining noises, those are begging calls from the pups. Now, there's a little bit of something that's not actually in my script. You can see that the otters are sprinting. They have a communal latrine site, and I didn't know this 'cause I just started. Um, and so, so I was actually sitting in their latrine. These uh, otters that are swimming up river here, these are the prior year's broods, uh, brood rather. So, these are three yearling otters. They're sexually mature otters.

and they stay with the family. All of this was just incredible to me. Um, and part of the reason it was incredible and to everybody is that the otter were returning after a long absence. So, um, we know that there were otter in Singapore in sometime before the mid-20th century, and we know partly because of individual accounts, but partly because of things like this. This is haa Villa, and these are statues of otter in haa Villa. But this installation was moved in 1937. So, before 1937, we know that otter weren't just present in Singapore, but they were prominent in Singapore and prominent enough that their statues were put with Chinese Legends. But then Singapore started to change, it modernized, it started to industrialize, and all of a sudden, the waterways got filthy. What happened was they started to fill with sludge, industrial pollution, and dead animals to the point where they stank. And otter live in water, they eat fish in water, and they couldn't eat and live in waterways that were that dirty.

So, they left, but things changed again. Singapore enacted policies to clean up their waterways, and they were really, really successful. So, all of a sudden, instead of having waterways that were filled with filth, we had waterways that were filled with fish. And from the otter's point of view, they were feeding troughs. So, they came back, and now we have lots of otters all over Singapore. We have about 12 families. These are smooth-coated otters. They're a pretty large otter. The adults get up to about 10 kg, which is larger than the European common otter. They're a little bit unusual as mammals go because the adult offspring stay with the family as helpers. So, a family group might have two dominant breed individuals and one or two sets of adult offspring that are staying as helpers, and then a brood of pups, which is pretty typical. The family sizes are quite large in Singapore. We have families that are over 20 individuals, and we have more than a dozen families.

in Singapore, and those families are watched by otter watchers, some of whom go out and watch the otter every day. My students worked closely with some of the otter watchers, and we got to find out all sorts of interesting things. So, these are otters playing. Otters have a really tough life. They wake up in the morning, they fish, they roll around in the grass, they play, they go to sleep, and then a few hours later, they do it again. So, my students wanted to know whether adults and pups played differently and what they did to look at this. They found literally dozens of interactions like this and looked at the frequencies of roll switching among the individuals who are playing. So, the pups here, if you watch them long enough, they do something where one pup will chase the other, and then it'll switch roles, so the second pup chases the first. It's very much like tag, you're it. It turns out that pups do this a lot, and adults don't do this much at all. If an adult is in a

dominant position. It stays in a dominant position, but this tells us something. It tells us something about how play has different functions for pups versus adults. For pups, play is a way that they're figuring things out and they're learning. But for adults, they're jockeying for a position in the social group, and that's why they don't give up their position of dominance. I don't know if you noticed this. It was early in the video, but there's a monitor lizard that's watching the otter play. And it turns out this is pretty common. Monitor lizards and otters live in the same environments. They both eat fish, and they bump into each other all the time. And otters sometimes attack the monitor lizards, and sometimes they kill the monitor lizards, but not all the time. So my students wanted to know when the otter attacks, what conditions lead to the otter attacking times but not other times. This is a pair of otters that are approaching a monitor lizard, and if

you notice the monitor lizard's frill is open. Its throat frill is open. It's in an aggressive posture right here. And in fact, just seconds after this picture was taken, the monitor lizard whipped its tail at the otter. So, monitor lizards can also be aggressive, but most of the time, including here, they're reacting to the otter. What my students found after looking at dozens of these kinds of interactions was that otters were more likely to be aggressive if there were pups around, and they were most likely to be aggressive if there were more pups in a group than there were adults. So, the otters are only aggressive to defend the pups. The otters are big, and they're fast, and they're smart, and they don't really have to worry about the monitor lizards very much, but the pups do because they're small and they're kind of dumb. It turns out that pups drive a lot of the things that otters do. So, watch what's going on here. Do you see how they're swimming in a

line by the way we never get this close to otters anymore. And if I scold my students if I see this and I get scolded if I'm this close. We try and give uh OTS a pretty wide birth. What they're doing here is catching fish but what's interesting is they're catching really small fish. Uh this is called hering or coring depending on the medium in which they're doing it. And uh it turns out that otters do this only when they have pups. And when they do it they typically catch very small fish. So this isn't a way for them to catch more fish and it isn't a way for them to catch larger fish. What it is is a way for them to teach their pups how to hunt. And it's not just that the pups are learning how to hunt by being with the adults. It's that the adults are actively changing their behavior so that they can teach the pups what to do. So all of these um discoveries and

There are a few more of them. We couldn't have done without the otter Watchers, and the otter Watchers are incredibly dedicated to watching otters. We really owe them a lot, and I really want to kind of voice that gratitude towards them. A lot of things motivate otter Watchers, so otter Watchers might be curious about the otters; they might like the otters, but a lot of the otter Watchers are photographers, and that's their primary hobby. For them, this is a chance to get really excellent photographs. The same thing in Singapore is true with birders. If you've ever gone birding in Singapore, it's a little bit surreal because rather than go out and look for people with big binoculars, you look for people with big cameras. But otter watching and bird watching are gateways. They're gateways for people to interact with nature. So, people who might start otter watching because they want to get photographs of cute pups.

might continue to do other things because they've formed a connection with nature. We see this all the time, that people care about nature when they form some connection to nature, whether that connection is to an otter or to a pair of hornbills on campus or to a bird that visits them on their balcony. We need these personal connections, and we see them all over the place, so that's one thing to emphasize. But I'm not the only one who's thinking about this. Singapore has a lot of policies that make these kinds of connections a lot easier. So, we talked about Singapore cleaning up its waterways in the '70s and '80s. They've done a lot of other things too, including planting over a million trees. There are over 300 parks and nature reserves. Singapore has a plan that no one should be more than 10 minutes away from some kind of park. Now, there are a lot of reasons to do this, and some of these are public health reasons, but one of the effects of this is that people

will have more chances to interact with nature, and they'll have more chances to care. So, I'm really excited about these possibilities, especially in Singapore, especially because Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Recently, n Parks changed its motto, and Parks had the motto that Singapore is a city in a garden, and they changed it to Singapore as a city in nature. And I think this is a real effort on Singapore's part to shift how they view their relationship to Nature. I think we're trying to get away from something where nature is over there on the other side of a fence or a wall or something like that. Nature is something that's around us and above us and beside us, and Singapore is acknowledging that, and that's true in lots of places, including in cities. So, I think this also raises other questions such as can cities be Wildlife refuges? Is the biodiversity we see in Singapore, is this the last hot Ember of the biodiversity that was here before, or is this something that we can protect and maybe Foster and

grow lots of cities have wildlife. It's not just Singapore. Most North American cities have wildlife like raccoons and coyotes, and some have bears and bobcats, but sometimes they're even more impressive things. For example, Los Angeles has mountain lions, and Mumbai has leopards, and there's still one jaguar kicking around Tucson. So, there are still these big cats, not just predators, but big cats that are in other cities. And Singapore, unlike some of those cities, is just incredibly, incredibly dense in terms of human population, and yet we're ripe with wildlife. So, I think it's a real question: can we make cities that are wildlife refuges? Can we make cities that foster some kind of productive relationship between wildlife and humans? Can we make cities where we exist in close proximity, side by side? I think we can. The founder of Singapore famously, or at least as legend has it, saw a large creature moving along, and he thought it was a lion, and so he named Singapore after it, Singapore Lion City, and much later

Singapore adopted its mascot of a myr lion, which is supposed to celebrate Singapore's history as a sea city and this legacy of it being a lion city. Obviously, there are no lions in Singapore outside of the zoo, and there never were. But we do have a ferocious predator that hunts in groups, fights giant lizards, protects and teaches its offspring, and that's frequent in the waterways around Singapore. Isn't that predator sort of half fish and half lion? Singapore is magic. [Applause]

The Otters of Singapore — and Other Unexpected Wildlife Thriving in Cities | Philip Johns | TED

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싱가포르의 마법: 개인적인 경험

내레이터는 싱가포르의 깨끗하고 활기찬 도시 풍경과 도시 생활과 열대 야생동물이 독특하게 어우러진 모습에 매료되었습니다.

이들은 킹코브라와 비단뱀이 싸우고 야생 앵무새가 어깨에 착지하는 등 놀라운 동물과의 교감을 목격했습니다.

내레이터가 수달을 가까이서 관찰하고 수달의 행동을 관찰한 내용을 공유하면서 비샨 가족의 수달은 소셜 미디어에서 큰 주목을 받았습니다.

수달은 20세기 중반까지만 해도 싱가포르에서 흔하게 볼 수 있었지만 산업화와 환경오염으로 인해 사라졌습니다.

성공적인 정화 정책으로 수달이 다시 돌아왔고, 현재 싱가포르에는 약 12개 가족이 살고 있습니다.

부드러운 털을 가진 수달은 성체 새끼가 도우미 역할을 하는 독특한 사회 구조를 가지고 있으며, 장난기 넘치는 상호작용을 통해 새끼와 성체의 놀이 행동에 차이가 있음을 알 수 있습니다.

수달 행동에서 놀이와 새끼의 역할

수달은 놀이 중에 지배적인 위치를 유지하며, 새끼는 이를 학습에 활용하고 성체는 사회적 지위를 차지하기 위해 경쟁합니다.

수달과 모니터도마뱀의 상호작용은 흔히 볼 수 있는데, 새끼가 많을수록 수달이 도마뱀에게 더 공격적으로 행동합니다.

작은 물고기를 잡는 등 수달의 행동은 새끼 수달의 존재에 영향을 받는데, 이는 새끼 수달에게 사냥 방법을 가르치기 위해서입니다.

수달 관찰자와 자연과의 연결의 중요성

수달 관찰자는 수달을 관찰하고 사진을 찍으며 자연과의 교감을 증진하는 데 중요한 역할을 합니다.

이러한 현상은 싱가포르의 조류 탐조 활동에도 반영되어 있는데, 두 활동 모두 사람들이 자연과 소통할 수 있는 관문 역할을 하기 때문입니다.

수로 청소, 나무 심기 등 싱가포르의 정책은 사람들이 자연과 소통할 수 있는 더 많은 기회를 만들어 자연을 분리된 존재에서 도시 생활의 필수적인 부분으로 인식하는 도시 관점을 전환하는 것을 목표로 합니다.

도심 속 야생동물: 놀라운 존재감

북미 도시를 포함한 많은 도시에는 다양한 야생동물이 서식하고 있으며, 로스앤젤레스의 퓨마, 뭄바이의 표범 등이 대표적인 예입니다.

싱가포르 역시 인구 밀도가 높지만 다양한 야생동물이 서식하고 있습니다.

싱가포르의 창시자가 전설적인 대형 동물과의 만남에서 영감을 받아 도시 이름이 유래되었으며, 싱가포르의 독특한 수로에는 물고기와 사자의 특징을 모두 지닌 사나운 포식자가 서식하고 있습니다.