Mammals in urban centers: a dataset from the perspective of the media in Brazil

Abstract

The continuous growth of the urban population, coupled with habitat loss, has resulted in unanticipated interactions between animals and humans in urban centers. In this study, we investigated the presence of mammals in urban centers through newspaper reports on websites. Specifically, we examined: i) the frequency of photographic records, ii) the temporal trends (2001 to 2021) and spatial trends (Brazilian Federative regions and states) of the records, and iii) the orders, families, and species most frequently reported in urban centers. On the Google platform (http://www.google.com.br), we used combinations of the keywords “mammals in urban centers,” “mammals found in the city”, and “mammals found in the municipality” to survey mammal records. We excluded repeated news items, sites that experienced technical problems during the search period, and those that did not cover the topic. We compiled a total of 733 websites. The records spanned from 2002 to 2021, with 73% occurring in the last four years. The Southeast, South, and Midwest regions stood out. The animals recorded belonged to 55 mammal species (16 vulnerable and 3 endangered), distributed in 22 families and 10 orders. The data indicate that the majority of mammal sightings in urban areas occur on streets, with some conflictual interactions. This is the first study that utilizes websites for diagnosing the mammal fauna present in urban centers in Brazil. The dataset generated here could aid in understanding the occurrence of mammal species in the urban environment.