In today's example of animal-adjacent class warfare, wild smooth-coated otters have been invading the garden's of Singapore's rich and devouring their expensive koi. In one night, a pod of otters did $65,000 of damage to one collection.
Otters have long been native to Singapore, but they were rare back when the city's streams and canals were heavily polluted. Now that the waters are cleaner and the people less economically strapped, they are back in force, roaming the city in pods of about 15 animals. Most estimates put their number around 100. People say they got particularly bold during last spring's complete Covid-19 lockdown.
Koi fanciers are of course outraged, but so far majority opinion is with the otters. It is a theme seen at various places around the world, that when wild animals invade the compounds of the wealthy – beavers in Virginia, capybaras in Argentina – some people in the working class cheer.
In the United States, if a rich koi-owner shot all the otters attacking his fish, and then hung the carcasses in front of the local offices of the EPA--or maybe, just for grins, the ACLU or NOW--that rich person would immediately become a darling of the right-wing working class. I can imagine a similar process in Argentina.
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