What Are Some Animals That Live in Italy

The ebb and menstruation of Rome'due south natural world is documented in an exhibition at the city's Zoology Museum.

When a family of wolves was filmed on the green fringes of Rome last September – signifying a return to the upper-case letter after more than than a century – it made headlines around the world. The wolves were recorded past subconscious cameras at Castel di Guido, a nature reserve managed by the Italian league for bird protection (LIPU), not far from Fiumicino airport and the former Malagrotta dump.
In recent weeks LIPU revealed that the wolf family includes five cubs, one of which is disabled, dragging its hind legs, probably the issue of a trauma or degenerative illness. LIPU officials are currently working to ensure the wellbeing of the wolves, a protected species in Italia since 1971, including trying to keep stray dogs at bay to avoid the birth of hybrids.

A secret camera filmed the wolves at Castel di Guido.

In Dec, just when Romans were getting over the wolf news, a video surfaced online of a family of wild boar, or cinghiali, pottering around the streets of Trastevere, a stone'southward throw from Tiber Island. The early morning amble of the boars – comprising squealer, sow and 6 jolly piglets – was amongst the most brazen daylight incursions of the urban center eye by wildlife in modernistic times. Another popular recent video features a Roman motorist racing a wild boar – complete with excited but unprintable commentary – up Via Baldo degli Ubaldi near the Vatican.

Wild boar on the streets of Settebagni in due north Rome.

Rome is also experiencing increasing difficulty with visitors from the skies, such as seagulls and starlings, while its problem with rats is equally old every bit the city itself, despite the capital's environment councillor Pinuccia Montanari'south merits never to have seen one.
But why this bold behavioural change in wild animals and birds "muscling in" on our urban center? The principal answer involves easy access to discarded nutrient, bachelor to have away or eat straight from bin-bags, pecked open up helpfully by gulls and crows. Other factors enticing animals into the city include a warmer urban climate and, in many cases, a lack of natural predators.

Seagulls observe rich picking in the urban center'southward new open up-way bins. Photo *Corriere della Sera*.

A electric current exhibition at Rome's Zoology Museum showcases the evolution of the city'south ecosystem based on the important studies undertaken at the museum. Parks and ancient ruins provide a new, alternative habitat for wild animals and birds whose urbanisation is happening earlier our eyes. Within Rome'southward green belt there are i,300 wild plant species, 5,200 types of insects, xvi varieties of reptile, 140 dissimilar birds and 33 species of mammal.
Under the shadow of a whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling, the exhibition Diverso per Natura charts how these creatures take adjusted to a urban center environment, how they live, how they interact with humans, even how they dice.
Newly stuffed by the resident taxidermist, the deceased animals "acquire an boggling value – a 2d life," the museum's director Bruno Cignini told Wanted in Rome. The showroom at the Museo Civico di Zoologia di Roma is also designed to educate visitors on the precarious balance between flesh and the natural world.

A sandpiper and its chick at Rome's zoological museum.

One example given is the frail habitat of the sandpiper, or fratino, a tiny wading bird which makes its nest in open up footing on the bounding main shore. However its summer breeding season means that it faces meaning risks on beaches pop with humans. The exhibition features a mother sandpiper, her minuscule chick nestled under her wing, huddled low over the sands at Torre Flavia, a littoral expanse n-westward of Rome. Cignini suggests that the sight of the female parent bird minding her baby might make people think twice about leaving rubbish behind them or exist more aware when setting up camp on remote shores. This, he says, is part of the "seconda vita" upshot of the exhibited creatures.
Extinct
Another thought-provoking aspect of the show involves the animals that once thrived in the greater Rome area but are now extinct. One such instance is that of the otter, or lontra, which lived along the Tiber until a century ago, when it died out due to pollution and human activity.
However the 1950s saw the arrival of the nutria, a destructive beaver-similar rodent released in big numbers following the sudden fall-off in demand for its fur. The herbivorous animals are now a familiar sight on the Tiber'southward banks.
Cignini explains that certain species adapt to new environments far quicker than others. The well-nigh wily of these is the play a trick on, or volpe, which he says is "living all over Rome, even in the historic centre." Cignini says that he recently received a phone call from Trajan's Markets, a museum at the pes of Via Nazionale, seeking advice about how to liberate a visiting fox. From a geographical perspective, Cignini points out that animals such as the fox take more or less an uninterrupted green coridoor running from the city'south southern Parco dell'Appia Antica, near Ciampino airport, all the way to the Colosseum.

A fox acquires a "second life" at the zoological museum.

The zoology museum's taxidermist Maurizio Gattabria is pictured retrieving a dead fox, knocked down by a motorist on nearby Valle Giulia. Freshly stuffed, the unfortunate beast is now a playful boyfriend climbing a grapevine. Gattabria says that each animate being received by the museum is given a "carta d'identità", outlining equally much information as possible, before being stored for hereafter analysis.
Protected species
In times past, Gattabria says, the birds and animals would be presented proudly past gunmen simply today, in the era of protected species, the deceased arrivals die from natural causes. 1 exception to this is a crane, or gru, retrieved after being shot by a poacher in Lido dei Pini southward of Rome in 2010, while it was migrating to north Africa. Poignantly, the bullet used to bring down this magnificent bird is included at its feet.

Starlings swirling over Rome's EUR suburb.

Cignini is an authority on the metropolis's starlings and was pivotal in the recent campaign to motility the birds away from the centre, where their vast quantities of oily guano were causing havoc for pedestrians and motorists. The technique adopted was an artificial distress call which saw the birds flock to the sprawling Verano cemetery whose residents are incapable of complaints. Equally for the reason behind the birds' aerial ballets over the upper-case letter, Cignini says: "Wait closer the next time: one of the thousands of silhouettes will be much larger than the others – an attacking hawk – which picks off the most vulnerable birds unable to go on the footstep."
Skilful news
In Rome this larger dot amongst the starlings could exist a peregrine falcon whose Italian population was well-nigh wiped out in the 1970s thanks to DDT, a pesticide banned in Italy in 1978. The poison caused eggshell thinning, resulting in the mother peregrines breaking the eggs in their nests. Still after decades of despair comes good news. A pair of peregrines, Aria and Vento, has been breeding for years on the roof of Rome's Sapienza University in the S. Lorenzo district, and visitors to the exhibition can monitor the birds via a webcam. Today in that location are up to twenty nesting couples in Rome, some of them living amidst the ruins at the Baths of Caracalla.

A "birdcam" monitors the nest of Aria and Vento on the roof of Rome'due south Sapienza University.

Perchance the most notorious bird to brand its domicile in the Eternal City is the herring dupe, nowadays since 1971 when a female bird, found injured on the Tuscan island of Giannutri, was entrusted to Fulco Pratesi, founder of the Italian co-operative of the World Wildlife Fund. Pratesi nursed the bird back to health at the Bioparco, located adjacent to the zoology museum. One matter led to some other and today Rome's gulls number an estimated 10,000.
Piece of cake pickings
For the start few decades the gulls kept themselves to themselves, roosting on the highest Roman rooftops and flocking by day to the city's Malagrotta rubbish dump, until its closure in 2013. The birds have since discovered the easy pickings on the capital's streets where they maintain an increasingly audacious presence.

Rose-ringed parakeet displayed at the zoological museum.

Other relative newcomers include the bright green parakeets which occupy Rome'south leafy areas following their release from captivity in the 1970s and 1980s, in areas such every bit Caffarella. The city has two singled-out species: the rose-ringed parakeet, a tropical Afro-Asian bird with red bill that takes over the tree-hole homes of Rome's woodpeckers, and the monk parakeet, a less flashy and more than discreet Southward American variety that builds communal wicker-like nests.
Mysterious just rarely seen, the city's five owl species provide united states with a vital rodent-control service. All five specimens are on brandish including the ethereal barn owl which – if you are lucky enough – you might glimpse swooping under the moon at Villa Pamphilj.

By Andy Devane

Diverso per Natura runs until 15 January 2022 at Museo Civico di Zoologia di Roma, Via Ulisse Aldrovandi 18, tel. 0667109270, www.museodizoologia.it. Tues-Dominicus 09.00-19.00.

This article was published in the Feb 2022 edition of Wanted in Rome magazine.

Edward Hery1954