I am coming to the conclusion that the market for «cute» animal photos and videos is detrimental to Animal Welfare. In some countries it encourages people to buy wild animals as pets when in fact these wild animals are totally unsuited to become pets and usually suffer. It also results in an increasing number of zoos, often very small and cramped, which house cute animals in prisonlike conditions. These animals suffer greatly in small, unsuitable enclosures, often with concrete floors and in the case of capybaras, who are semi aquatic, their water source is a small plastic tub often barely larger than the capybara himself. We humans cause so much suffering to the animals we call «cute». Capybaras, and all other species, are so VERY MUCH MORE than cute.

Kin was always frightened and spent much of the day hiding behind this wooden board in her small wooden hut. The…