3 Ways Feeding Wildlife is Dangerous for Humans

In the last post, I talked about why feeding wildlife, especially at tourist sites, can be bad for the health and well-being of the animals. Today I want to go into why feeding wildlife is also dangerous for humans. There is the obvious risk of bites, but feeding can also create conditions for disease spread and pose risks to community safety.

1. Increased Aggression/Attacks

When tourists become a regular source of food for wildlife, the animals begin to expect food from any human that approaches. If they don’t get the food they are expecting, they can react aggressively; chasing, biting, or scratching to get the food they think the tourist has, or the food the tourist has but isn’t giving them. Watching an animal trot up to you looking for food may seem cute, but it becomes significantly less so when it’s a kangaroo ripping a gash in your stomach for not sharing your chips. One popular spot for seeing kangaroos in Australia saw a noticeable increase in aggression after tourists kept feeding them junk food. This led to gashes and stitches for several unlucky tourists. If you don’t want 17 stitches to your face as a souvenir, it’s best not to encourage aggressive behavior in wildlife by feeding them.

This aggression towards humans has been documented in many cases around the world with a variety of animal species that have been fed by humans. Bears in U.S. national parks, primates in a variety of countries, and marine mammals such as sea lions and dolphins. Sea lions, used to eating the scraps thrown from boats in the marina, now haul out and rest on the docks and pose a threat to the people working on the boats. Their willingness to be so close to humans has also resulted in attacks on tourists. You may remember a few years ago when a video spread showing a young girl being pulled from the edge of a dock and into the water by a large sea lion, who had food tossed to him minutes before.

Scientists have also documented many cases of dolphins biting, ramming, and even pulling people underwater. In our books, and movies, and myths, we often characterize these animals as friendly and playful. We forget that they are apex predators, very capable of harming us. Can you imagine going for a swim, hoping for a magical encounter with a dolphin only for it to turn into a nightmare when it grabs your leg and starts to drag you down? If you don’t want hangry dolphins coming after you, don’t feed them junk food and let them catch their own healthy meals. And if that’s not enough of a deterrent, consider the up to $100,000 fine you may have to pay for violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the U.S.

2. Risk of Disease

Diseases that can jump from animals to humans are called zoonosis.

Do you know what helps those diseases to jump to humans?

Close contact with animals.

Do you know what encourages animals to get up close to humans?

Feeding them.

When tourists feed animals and encourage them to be in close contact with humans (through the expectation of food) it increases the opportunity for disease to jump to humans. Especially if those now aggressive animals scratch or bite, providing direct transmission through body fluids (their saliva). Getting 17 stitches to the face is a bad souvenir, but getting herpes from a monkey bite or an antibiotic-resistant strain of “seal-finger” is probably worse.

This particular point may be of additional significance given the current state of the world. We are experiencing a pandemic of unprecedented scale and for the first time for many, it has directly affected their daily lives. While the host has not been confirmed, it is believed the coronavirus originated in bats with pangolins as a possible intermediate host before jumping to humans. These are 2 wild animals that humans would not usually have close contact with. But once brought into the crowded, unsanitary wet markets where people could purchase them for meat, it bred the perfect conditions for the virus to spread.

Wet markets are a separate topic, but the important thing to remember is just like humans, animals have evolved with their own unique sets of disease. To them, these diseases may cause little to no harm because they are naturally exposed and have their own antibodies to fight it. The problem is when you introduce this new disease to populations that have never encountered it before. Studies have shown that over half of new disease outbreaks are from zoonotic diseases, and the more we bring the animals into our environment (or push into theirs), the greater our chances of having another epidemic. This is not the first time it has happened (SARS, Ebola), and it is happening with increasing frequency.

3. Disrupt Community

And finally, once the tourists leave, it’s the local community that’s left to deal with the mess they created. The aggressive, bitey, potentially disease-carrying mess. We’ve already established that feeding can increase attacks and aggression as well as pass on diseases. For tourists that are only there for a few hours, this may not be a concern. People always like to think, it won’t be me. I’ll just give the animal some food so it won’t bite me and take a selfie while it’s munching away. The problem is, now everyone that lives near those animals have to constantly deal with the risk of those animals coming after them, in expectation of food, while they’re trying to carry on with their daily life. Those kangaroos from before? Live just outside a functioning hospital. And while we’re on the subject of Australia, you know the whole “dingo ate my baby” story? Yeah, that might be tourists’ fault too. One area that had experienced dingo attacks blamed it on tourists feeding and drawing in dingos because tourists expected that they could see them up close from tour pamphlets.

In my other post I also mentioned animals, addicted to human foods, raiding garbage. These are “nuisance” animals that break into garbage cans and dumpsters outside of homes, shops, and restaurants. This can create animosity between people in the community and the animals, and may put them in a difficult position with visitors who want to see these animals. They need to be able to live their lives safely, but if animals continue to attack and cause problems, they may decide to remove or eliminate those animals for public safety. This is a common occurrence with bears in parts of North America. In some cases they may be caught and relocated. But if they keep coming back, authorities will make the choice to euthanize them. People in tourist areas may have to weigh the value of the animals as a tourist attraction with their own safety, and chances are safety is going to come out on top.

Human Nature vs Wild Nature

Humans are social, tactile animals. We want to befriend and touch everything we see and there are plenty of posts online joking about our willingness to “pack-bond” with anything, including inanimate objects like roomba. We keep pets of all shapes and sizes and treat them as beloved family members, so it would seem it’s in our nature to want to share that love with other animals we see. But we need to learn to suppress that nature and respect wildlife’s need to stay wild. We need to maintain a respectful distance and not try to lure in animals for the sake of a “cool selfie”. This is not only for the animal’s health but for our personal and community safety and health.

The scale of the current outbreak has forced many to change their daily habits and drastically reduced global and domestic travel. If anything good comes from this, I hope that perhaps the break from tourist feeding will allow time for wildlife to unlearn begging behaviors and return to more normal, natural feeding behavior. And perhaps people will be more cautious of trying to touch and get close to the wildlife so that they can stay wild.

In the future, if you are ever traveling and come across local wildlife at a natural park, or beach, or wherever, please keep these points in mind and educate your friends and family about them as well. And if you want a closer picture of an animal, maybe consider a telephoto lens. It might be cheaper than the hospital visit to treat your stomach gash from the hangry kangaroo (at least in the U.S.).

References/Additional Reading

• Case study of dingo management on Fraser Island in Australia
• Feeding wildlife as a tourism attraction: a review of issues and impacts
• Begging behavior that dolphins learned may have contributed to their killing
• NOAA page on watching dolphins from a distance
• Article on the kangaroos at Morisset Hospital with video warning about the risks (includes pictures of the injuries)
• Kangaroos recovering after tourists blocked from property
• Article on the girl pulled into the water by sea lion (includes video)
• CDC page on zoonotic diseases
• Feral macaques in Florida carry the herpes virus