Inadvertently Medicating the Natural World

Drugs, used by humans, clearly impact on the behaviour and consequent survival of wild animals. This problem seems to recently be getting worse. It could also, of course, be due to people being more prone to look for such pollution events. Animals are exposed to both legal and recreational drugs. Exposure generally results from sewage discharge but modern pharmaceutical waste can also be problematic. Pharmaceutical and Water companies both need to tighten their waste disposal (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/06/drug-pollution-wildlife-threat-aoe). Recent examples of drug influences include:- finding methamphetamine-addicted Brown trout; contraceptive pills inducing sexual reversal in some fish populations and Prozac (an antidepressant) altering sexual and aggressive behaviour in Starlings. Humans need to be more aware of these kind of phenomena and to reduce their occurence.