Are all mammal species willing to be petted, as in massage?

Alex Cooper

 

Are all mammal species willing to be petted, as in massage? Can they all be affectionate towards humans?

Sorry for the belated reply.

It took me a while to type left-handed and stem the bleeding from my unplanned hand amputation.

Turns out the Christmas Coca Cola adverts have been lying to us:

I prefer Pepsi. Hahaha, jk. No one prefers Pepsi. Now let me eat the rest of you.

I’d love to try again with tigers, hippos, honey badgers, rhinos, rutting elk, etc, etc, but I think I’d swiftly run out of body parts with which to perform said petting.

In other words, no. The vast majority of wild animals would respond with either fear or aggression if you even got close to them.

The exception might be animals that have evolved in isolated areas without land predators, and have no inbuilt fear of us. (Island tameness - Wikipedia.)

The classic example is the dodo, which is obviously not a mammal.

A more recent example? These goofy little muppets are very curious and tolerant of humans:

Quokkas on Rottnest Island are famously tame and willing to “pose” for selfies with humans. I doubt they’d respond aggressively if you tried to pet them, but I also doubt they’d enjoy it.

While it seems cute, it’s obviously bad news if non-native predators are introduced. NZ and Australia have lost a lot of native animals from this kind of thing. And some cruel people take advantage of these animals’ lack of fear.

When I went to Maria Island off Tasmania, even the wombats were pretty uninterested in humans. Despite the warnings of the staff not to touch the wildlife, plenty of people were stroking them. (Certainly not a good idea; as well as potentially causing stress to the animals, wombats have a nasty bite.)

If a wild animal that isn’t one of these rare cases comes up to you and shows no fear, it might actually be ill. (Either that or it’s become habituated to humans or, more accurately, humans with food.)

Either way, it’s not a good idea to stroke random wild animals, whether they’re small and fluffy, or big and bitey.

There are various exceptions involving animals hand-reared in captivity. Even large predators like lions and polar bears have been known to be affectionate… to the person who raised them, at least. One dude even hugs his pet croc. But being “tame” is not the same as being domesticated, and you should never try and pet a wild animal you’ve never met before.

Now if you’ll excuse me, this tourniquet isn’t going to tie itself.