Filming a Malabar pit viper chowing down on a bush frog is not how you may spend your evenings, but this is just another Tuesday night for wildlife biologist Yatin Kalki (28).

Armed with nothing but his smartphone, Kalki is among several Indian biologists making a run at content creation in the hope that more people will learn to love and eventually help conserve local species of reptiles and amphibians that are traditionally demonised and feared. “I don’t think anybody’s indifferent about snakes. People either hate them or they think they’re really cool, or they’re really scared of them… So, snakes are animals that have a lot of viral potential (on social media),” he says, explaining the abundance of snake-focused content on social media — much of which, biologists say, is neither ethically filmed nor based in scientific fact.

The ends don’t justify the means

Kalki had been working in the field for nearly 10 years — conducting research and aiding the Karnataka Forest Department with snake rescues — when he decided, in late 2021, to post more regularly about his work to his then 8,000-strong following on the social media site, Instagram. Now, popularly known as @vegancobra to his 103,000 followers, Kalki has become one of India’s bastions of scientific information on Instagram where untrained and inexperienced catchers agitate snakes for engagement. “If you actually followed an ethical response for a normal snake rescue, there would be zero drama,” he says. “But most [content] that have snakes as the focus are always emphasising the amount of danger and the guy will be like, ‘I got this call for a cobra and the cobra was so angry. It was chasing me around. My life was flashing before my eyes…’ Like, bro, just chill.”

For Kalki, the ends don’t justify the means. “There are a lot of things that you can do to make really viral content that’s completely unethical,” he says, adding that he refuses to stage interactions with wild animals for views. Gowri Shankar (48), founder of Kalinga Centre for Rainforest Ecology, shares this opinion. In just a year, Shankar as @gowrikalinga on Instagram has racked up millions of views and 62,000 followers (from 3,000) by showcasing quick, professional snake rescues as well as debunking viral videos where animals are visibly distressed and mishandled. He creates content in both English and Kannada and says, “People like us who are researchers, scientists… We just focus on a work publication, you know?… I didn’t know the impact of social media one year ago.”

Like them, biologist and content creator Kayden Anthony (29) is mindful about the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, when filming and has even used his platform to call attention to possible poaching. Anthony — who has worked in the field of wildlife conservation and management in Mumbai for around eight years — neither handles scheduled species nor enters protected forest areas, and only posts captions sourced from credible news outlets, research papers, and nonprofits such as WWF. “I would never want to post any information without verifying it… There was this species of plant algae that I thought was a lichen. So, when a botanist told me that, in the next video I did mention that this was actually a plant not a lichen,” he says.

Special focus on local species

Before posting as @man_of_the_forest_ to his almost 30,000 followers on Instagram (up from around 1,000 only six months ago), Anthony runs through a checklist in his mind. “Am I inspiring someone in the wrong way? Will someone try to mimic this? In one video, a cat snake bit me. What if someone thinks that a saw-scaled viper is a cat snake and tries to hold it?” His anxiety about potentially encouraging harmful behaviours, especially among his younger followers, is palpable. “Teenage boys do weird stuff online,” he jokes.

In 2021, marine conservationist Gabriella D’Cruz (32) co-created Seaweed Saturdays (@seaweedsaturdays), an Instagram account to increase awareness of India’s seaweed landscapes that has since grown to 1,200 followers. As a marine life content creator, D’Cruz must keep in mind that coral reefs, sea cucumbers and sea grass are also legally protected under the 1972 Act and cannot be removed or damaged. “I’m always wary of the fact that tide pools being open ecosystems are also open to harvesting… That’s a bit of a scary thought because by building curiosity towards something, you’re also leaving it open for exploitation to some degree,” says D’Cruz.

It’s their insistence on ethics and verified information and shouldering of a burden of responsibility towards wildlife that differentiates these creators from well-meaning amateur handlers at best and engagement-driven entertainers at worst. Though, what makes their content really special is their focus on local species. “A lot of people don’t even know that wildlife is all around them and they can go out to their backyard and find a bunch of cool things right there,” says Kalki.

These biologists may be skyrocketing to online popularity, but the real stars of the show are India’s native ecosystems teeming with everything from the green vine snake and Indian chameleon to the Deccan banded gecko and blue tiger moth. Thrilled by the proximity to such interesting (and lesser-known) creatures, herping enthusiasts have been flocking to expeditions hosted by their favourite content creator.

Trust in content creators is paramount

“This is first-hand information. It’s not something I’m reading off the internet. They tell me everything as it is and I trust that,” says landscape designer Jananee Mohan (33) who has been following Kalki on Instagram for two years and has since attended a handful of herping tours, both paid and free, organised by him. In the murky waters of human-wildlife interactions in India, trust in a creator’s intentions is paramount. “Scientific talk is easy to distinguish versus content creator talk,” says motion designer Nikhil Shrestha (28) who judges a creator’s legitimacy by their calm demeanour around wild animals, whether or not they use professional rescue equipment, and if they provide scientific context to the visuals on screen.

He has been following Kalki on Instagram for several months and is hoping to attend a paid herping tour in Goa hosted by the creator’s ecotourism organisation, Ecophis Wildlife. “There’s an adventure aspect to it… It’s like playing Pokémon for me,” says Shrestha who has taken herping trips almost annually since 2019 organised by herpetologists he discovered on social media. Kalki, who once struggled to fill tours for groups of only six, now sees that tours with 12 to 16 available slots are fully booked in 48 to 72 hours. “A lot of people who have been on a trip with us already have come back to join on more trips or they come back with their friends,” he says, explaining that a good quality experience draws people back.

However, not all habitats inspire excitement. “We have quite a dark, ominous-looking ocean. It’s not like in some island-nations where it’s blue water. There seems to be some kind of apprehension or fear with the ocean in India,” says D’Cruz. Despite her proximity to local marine life such as puffer and butterfly fish, moray eels, damselfish, sea slugs and snappers and background in tourism management, D’Cruz can’t offer first-hand experiences to her audience as easily as her peers do because they would require swimming and diving skills and equipment. “If you look at land-based ecosystems, you can just walk into a forest or look at a coastal ecosystem like a beach, sand dunes… It’s not as expensive as engaging with the ocean,” she says. To interact more with the community she’s building online, D’Cruz attends conferences regularly and is even planning to host tidepool walks and seaweed tasting sessions in Goa in the months of October and April.

Making scientific knowledge accessible

For many, guided walks can be gateways to developing a greater interest in wildlife. Student Payal Lulla (18) had been following Anthony on social media for only a few months when she registered for his free herping walk and invited six friends to join. “[My friends] were really surprised that this is the quality of information that they’re getting and all of this is free,” she remarks. From guiding only two to four attendees at free events, Anthony now wrangles crowds of up to 30 people. “We had to stop the registrations because there are so many people wanting to come,” he says. Even his paid events are capped out because audiences seem to be investing in legitimate personalities. “People know I’m from the field and not a random person making videos. Followers feel a level of authenticity,” he says. Anthony’s colleague and fellow biologist Sandra Pereira (26) who leads community outreach believes the secret sauce is making scientific jargon digestible and fun. “They like the part where we are actually bringing it down to a normal person’s level and giving information which is not very easily available, especially from authentic sources,” she says.

Hosting these experiences — many of which are free — as well as building an online presence requires resources. Anthony records on devices already at his disposal for field work and uses his days off to film. He used to edit directly on Instagram during his two-hour long commute to and from work, a job he’s now quit to focus on content creation and wildlife education full-time.

As someone who has over a decade’s worth of experience in the field, D’Cruz too has seen the gaps in scientific information on-ground and hopes to bridge them. However, marine life content creation comes with a unique set of challenges — she must not only film underwater with specialised and expensive equipment but also adapt to the weather. “For six months of the year, you can’t build content because it’s the monsoon,” she says, explaining that rainy months may bring herpetologists a flurry of wildlife activity but spell danger for her in high tide and rough seas. She also usually has a filming buddy. “I don’t go to tidepools alone… Not only because I’m scared of slipping but because there have been men who have followed me around,” she says. Despite the effort to produce quality, ethical content, creators’ have found that their audiences don’t always mobilise in the way they hope. “The crowd which is watching your video… Doesn’t mean that they will visit you [and] support you,” says Shankar who is in the process of hiring marketing professionals who can convert his online influence to tangible donations and in-person participation in conservation.

But how can biologist-creators attempt to monetise online without eroding their audience’s trust? The answer, followers say, lies in creating content with a purpose beyond self-promotion. “If you see somebody trying to actually promote wildlife, give you information about wildlife creatures then you feel that it’s not about them. It’s about educating the masses,” says Lulla.

D’Cruz wants to go a step further and, like Shankar, create content in regional languages to bring more people into the fold. “Fishing communities are generally left out of the conversation when it comes to knowledge sharing… That’s quite problematic,” she says. “They need to know that seaweed farming has a lot of risks in terms of water temperature changing, disease outbreaks… All of this information while in privileged circles is interesting, I think in fishing communities is really valuable.”

The endgame, notes D’Cruz, is building an informed public that prioritises conservation. “Sometimes I feel academia gets stuck in its silos but I really feel like active citizenship needs scientists to step out of this role and be people who are also activists and storytellers and tour guides and engage with the larger community,” she says. Shankar echoes this sentiment and believes that if academicians can make complex information digestible for laymen, they can also direct them to ways the scientific community can be supported on-ground. He says, “Our objective here is not to become famous like any other film stars. Our objective is to create knowledge and conserve.”

Read more: India’s misunderstood spiders: from fear to fascination

Banner image: Wildlife biologist Kayden Anthony holding a pill bug on a herpetology expedition in Coorg, Karnataka, in August 2022. Image by Roma A. Tripathi.

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Aditi Tandon Senior Production Editor

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Animal BehaviourAnimalsIndia

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