Wild animals are increasingly adjusting to urban environments through a process known as synurbization. That's an undoubtedly bad sign — and serves as a warning for how much nature has been damaged by urbanization.
What's happening?
A new analysis by nonprofit news site Particle highlights how synurbization is reshaping wildlife behavior across the globe.
As the report outlines, many wild species — including squirrels, raccoons, foxes, badgers, and even coyotes — are now more prevalent in cities than in their traditional habitats.
These urban-adapted animals, dubbed synanthropes, tend to share several traits: They live in higher population densities, often show increased aggression toward their own species, and have highly adaptable diets that frequently include human food waste. Birds are among the most widespread synanthropes, with species like pigeons, ibises, cockatoos, and more thriving in urban settings.
The analysis highlights some wild animals — like Barcelona's wild boars, Mumbai's leopards, and Florida's manatees — as adapting to urban environments in notable behavior-changing ways. Take manatees — the gentle giants love the warm waters around power plants so much that they've stopped following their old migration routes and now depend on these fossil-fuel stations to stay warm.
With more than half of the world's population now living in urban areas, cities have become centers of bustling activity — and wildlife conflict. While many humans consider synanthropes pests, their ability to adapt to urban environments is a clear sign of how wildlife is being forced to evolve — or relocate — in response to expanding human development.
Why is understanding synurbization important?
In case there was any doubt, synurbization is not a good thing. While animals are surviving in urbanized environments, they are not thriving.
As natural landscapes are degraded by human development, habitats become fragmented or destroyed entirely, forcing wildlife to either adapt, migrate, or suffer population decline. This loss of habitat reduces biodiversity and disrupts ecological balance. Increased human activity also brings pollution, noise, and light pollution, all of which interfere with natural behaviors like feeding, mating, and migration.
Although wildlife bears the brunt of synurbization, humans are also affected. As the report highlights, some synanthropes can be dangerous to humans, like disease-carrying rats, aggressive stray dogs, and unruly wild boars. Encroaching on territories that displace these animals or force them to coexist with humans can lead to injury, disease, and death.
In India, for example, rabies is endemic. According to the World Health Organization, the country accounts for approximately 36% of global rabies deaths, with an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 human deaths each year. Most cases result from stray dog bites.
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While culling and relocation are two common tactics for ridding urban areas of synanthropes, the analysis offers a smarter, more sustainable alternative — redesigning urban infrastructure to better support wildlife.
Successful examples of supporting wildlife in urban areas include California's wildlife bridge over a busy highway and Finland's native wildflower habitat to support pollinators and local species.
"We can get creative with the ways we live together," Dr. Gillian Paxton, an environmental anthropologist at James Cook University, told Particle. "There is a role for redesigning cities and rethinking urban environments. We need to have cities that are accommodating to wildlife — but that does create problems."
As evidence of this complex dynamic, Particle highlights how some industrial areas are becoming more hospitable to wildlife as pollution declines. As a result, dolphins have been increasingly spotted near power stations in Japan, drawn to cleaner waters. While this suggests environmental improvement can benefit marine synanthropes, human activity still poses risks.
For instance, dolphins near Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant were exposed to dangerous levels of radioactivity following the 2011 nuclear disaster. This underscores the double-edged nature of human intervention: better environmental management can aid wildlife recovery, but serious threats remain.
"When we say we're living with something, that sounds very passive — like we just kind of coexist," Dr. Paxton told Particle. "Living together is more active than that. It involves both parties."
Paxton added: "Instead of tolerating the wildlife, we need to cooperate."
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