While the absence of tourists during the COVID-19 pandemic might have deprived the famous deer in Nara, Japan, of their favorite snack, it has worked wonders for their digestive health.
Before the outbreak, millions of tourists descended on the city — once the country’s capital — to view its shrines and temples, and feed the estimated 1,300 free-roaming deer in its main park.
While their preferred snack of senbei rice crackers are a nutritious combination of flour and rice bran, the deer would simply eat too many of them, triggering a raging thirst.
Photo: AP
“I suspect some deer ended up drinking too much water,” Nara Deer Preservation Foundation executive director Yoshitaka Ashimura told the Asahi Shimbun.
That took a toll on the animals’ health, causing gastrointestinal problems such as diarrhea, but now, deprived of their regular supply of senbei, the deer have been forced to seek out more of their traditional staple diet of plants and nuts, he said.
The result has been a transformation in their health, evidenced by the piles of perfectly formed pellet-like droppings affectionately referred to as “black beans.”
Nara’s deer, which have been known to attack visitors who tease them with food or try to take selfies with them, are believed to be divine messengers and were designated natural treasures in 1957.
The animals have the dramatic plunge in visitor numbers to thank for their improved bowel movements.
An estimated 2.58 million people visited Nara prefecture in 2018 — an almost 10-fold increase from 2012 — leading to a spate of deaths among animals who swallowed plastic bags and food wrappers discarded by them.
However, in May, just 1,700 people visited Japan from overseas — a 99.9 percent drop from the same month last year — as a result of travel bans and other restrictions prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the trend has hit businesses in Nara, it has brought an unexpected benefit for residents.
“Not only are the animals’ droppings more compact, they also stink less,” said Toshiharu Takaki, a regular visitor to the deer park for 40 years.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS