feeding wildlife Archives : Jenny Wren Rambles

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

Kangaroos are built to fight, with strong legs and long claws for kicking and slashing.
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

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.

Pure muscle waiting to launch out of the water and grab you. . .
Photo by Paul Macallan on Unsplash

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

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

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.

“Hey, don’t blame us just because you humans can’t keep your hands to yourselves.”
Photo by vishu vishuma on Unsplash

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

Despite signs asking them not to feed the animals, tourists often ignore them and feed the animals anyway.
By Tess McBride, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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

The urge to cuddle is a strong one.
Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

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.).

They even make telephoto lenses for phones!
https://www.amazon.com/Apexel-Telephoto-potencia-tr%C3%ADpode-Smartphone/dp/B07TB6N6LJ/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=telephoto+lens&qid=1590410136&sr=8-3

References/Additional Reading

5 Ways Tourists Feeding Wildlife is Harmful to Animals

The recent spread of Coronavirus and subsequent restrictions on travel have led to a significant and noticeable drop in tourist numbers in many areas around the globe. It is also bringing to the surface issues regarding public health and safety. One issue that is often overlooked is the feeding of wildlife in tourist areas.

A deer from Nara park that followed people into an underpass near the park after being fed. This photo is from 2013, but deer are now wandering farther outside the park and into the streets looking for food.
Photo credit: Anna Ayvazyan

One video being shared shows a large group of monkeys in Thailand spilling out into the road, fighting over a yogurt cup. In Japan, the deer of Nara Park are roaming outside the park and deeper into the surrounding city in search of food, hungry from the lack of the usual crackers they would receive from tourists. While it may seem like a fun activity on vacation, feeding wildlife can be harmful to their health.

1.Poor/Inappropriate Diet

A monkey, known as “Uncle Fatty”, was fed sugary and high-fat foods by tourists.
Photo Credit: Viral Press

Animals are evolved to eat a very specific diet, one that does not include the numerous junk foods that humans eat. If they eat too much of the wrong foods, it can have serious consequences for their health. Our junk foods are highly addictive (have you ever eaten just 1 chip?), and once exposed many animals may prefer the high calorie highly flavorful human foods. You will probably not be surprised to hear that when wild animals eat too much junk food, they can develop some of the same problems as humans. Obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, joint issues. The reduced mobility and added pressure on their immune system can make it more difficult for them to forage for natural foods and encourage them to continue going after the easy human foods.

Eating nutritionally deficient foods (or the wrong nutrition balance) can also impact the growth and development of young animals. A good example of this is the feeding of bread to ducks and waterfowl. Bread is not a natural part of their diet and lacks the nutrients they need. Birds that eat too much bread (or popcorn, or crackers) can go on to develop conditions such as angel wing and metabolic bone disease (MBD). Birds with these conditions have weak or malformed bones which can lead to malformed wings and feathers that grow in wrong. If not caught and corrected in the early stages, birds suffering from these conditions become unable to fly, leaving them vulnerable to predators and less able to compete and find food.

Muscovy Ducks with Angel Wing
By Cengland0 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4936599

I mentioned the addictive nature of human foods before, and this is important because it feeds (pun intended) into another problem. Once animals get hooked on human foods and associate human areas with that easy food, they will actively go in search of it. This can mean monkeys stealing food from tourists, deer going after the trash from food stalls, or bears breaking into cars. In my visits to Nara park which is famous for its friendly deer, I have personally seen people holding out sharp wooden skewers, smelling of sauce, out to the deer to eat or plastic containers for them to lick the sauce out of. Despite signs warning people to keep their food and trash out of reach and put away, many see this as a way to entice the deer closer, laughing as the deer follow them around. The direct consequences of this have already been seen as multiple deer in the park have been found dead with stomachs full of plastic. Enticed by the smells on the trash, they end up eating it and developing blockages or internal damage that prevents them from eating.

2.Exceed Natural Carrying Capacity

Regularly feeding wildlife can artificially increase the population size in 1 of 2 ways. The first is that it attracts individuals that would normally be more spread out in the environment to a smaller more concentrated area. Animals naturally devote a lot of their time foraging for food and moving throughout their environmental range in search of that food. When large numbers of tourists become a reliable source of easy food, animals will be drawn to that and converge on the area. The other way population size increases is through natural births. If animals can meet their caloric needs and fill their stomachs with easy food quickly, this frees them from having to spend as much time and energy foraging. This allows them to spend their time on… other pursuits, leading to more babies.

The consequence of this increase in population size is that the animals may exceed the environment’s carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is the number of animals (or plants, or people) that an area can support without becoming degraded. This means that the environment has enough resources (food, water, space) for that population to survive. Once that population exceeds that capacity, there may be environmental degradation (for example, eat all the plants or trample the ground and then nothing can grow) and because there are not enough resources to go around, it can lead to animals going hungry and possibly dying. This may be happening to the deer in Nara park, who, due to the lack of tourist handouts, are leaving the park to head into the city in search of food.

3.Increased Disease/Injuries

When more animals are drawn into an area and in close contact with each other, this can lead to greater competition and fighting over food. The animals can be injured through these fights. Also, having the animals in close quarters in high numbers, where they are all eating and pooping in the same concentrated area, makes it easier for the animals to spread disease and parasites to each other. A study assessing stingrays fed as an attraction in the Cayman Islands showed that the tourist-fed stingrays had more parasites, more injuries (bites from other stingrays competing for food), and higher stress levels. With higher stress levels and open wounds, injured animals can have a harder time recovering and may spend longer periods healing than in less crowded conditions. So even though it may be an easy meal for them, the conditions created by tourist feeding sites can actually cause greater disease and injury spread.

Why did the deer cross the road? To get the deer crackers on the other side!
Photo by Christian MacMillan on Unsplash

And of course, feeding encourages animals to come closer to human areas. When they try to scavenge or are hanging out waiting for food, this puts them at risk of further injury. Currently, herds of deer at Nara have been wandering city streets and disrupting traffic. Animals gathering near roads or crossing roads looking for food can be hit by cars. Animals that get into garbage can be cut digging through or trying to eat the garbage. (I’m sure we’ve all seen the videos of animals with their heads stuck in food cans.) There are also dogs and unkind humans for them to contend with, so it would be in their best interest to stay away.

4.Reduced Ability to Survive on Their Own

If animals get used to handouts from humans they can lose vital survival skills. This is because they will spend less time foraging and gaining experience of what foods they can eat and where or how to find them. This is especially a problem if the adults are choosing to go for the easy food and don’t pass the necessary survival knowledge on to their young. Instead, the young are led to the handouts or the garbage to search for food. One study showed that bears learned nuisance behaviors, such as raiding livestock feed and garbage, from their mothers. Rather than learn proper foraging behavior. the behavior of relying on human foods is passed on to the next generation. Without these foraging skills and knowledge, it can be difficult for animals to feed themselves once the tourist handouts stop. If they are not given food to supplement their diet, and if they are unable to find food from lack of experience or lack of natural food, they may starve to death. Otherwise, they will continue scavenging and targeting human foods which will put them in more conflict with humans.

Do you think mom will bring back McDonald’s?
Photo by anthony renovato on Unsplash

5.Vulnerable to Predators

Finally, the last reason I want to cover is that feeding wildlife can make them more vulnerable to predators. Ill, injured, or less mobile animals congregating in the same area make an attractive target for predators. They are also in a predictable location and higher numbers which could mean an increased chance of success for the predator. Studies show that exposure and habituation to humans can make animals less wary of natural predators or other humans, or more bold in their interaction with predators. This has been demonstrated in tourist habituated gorillas that were slower to run or hide from poachers and were killed with greater frequency than non-habituated gorillas. While the gorillas were not fed by tourists, it does show that increased exposure to humans can have serious consequences when it alters animal behavior.

Feeding wildlife has direct (nutrition, disease, injuries) and indirect (survival skills, predator vulnerability) consequences. When we travel, we want to have a good time and enjoy the chance to see local wildlife. However, we need to respect wildlife and recognize the influence of our actions. Animals will eat any food they can get because they are concerned with getting enough to survive. They do not know the nutritional or caloric content of what they are receiving, but we do. It is up to us to make the responsible choice, and push aside our self-indulgence for the health and wellbeing of the animals.

Tag: feeding wildlife