Feeding wild animals can significantly change their behavior. Feeding or leaving unattended food to large animals, such as bears, can lead them to aggressively seek out food from people, sometimes resulting in injury.[9] Feeding can also alter animal behavior so that animals routinely travel in larger groups, which can make disease transmission between animals more likely.[10] In public spaces, the congregation of animals caused by feeding can result in them being considered
pests.[11] In zoos, giving food to the animals is discouraged due to the strict
dietary controls in place.[5] More generally, artificial feeding can result in, for example,
vitamin deficiencies[12] and
dietary mineral deficiencies.[13] Outside zoos, a concern is that the increase in local concentrated wildlife population due to artificial feeding can promote the
transfer of disease among animals or between animals and humans.[12][14]
Sign example gallery
Signs such as this are used to emphasize a no-feeding policy
Prohibited activities and safety instructions at a state park in
Oregon
Zoos
Zoos generally discourage visitors from giving any food to the animals.[5] Some zoos, particularly
petting zoos, do the opposite and actively encourage people to get involved with the feeding of the animals.[17] This, however, is strictly monitored and usually involves set food available from the
zookeepers or
vending machines, as well as a careful choice of which animals to feed, and the provision of hand-washing facilities to avoid spreading disease.[2] Domestic animals such as
sheep and
goats are often permitted to be fed,[2] as are
giraffes.[17]
National and state parks
In
national parks and
state parks, feeding animals can result in malnourishment due to inappropriate diet and in disruption of natural hunting or food-gathering behavior. It can also be dangerous to the people doing the feeding.[18]
In the US, early 20th century
park management actually encouraged animal feeding. For example, "the feeding of squirrels had been seen as a way to civilize the parks and rechannel the energies of young boys from aggression and vandalism toward compassion and charity."[19] Park rangers once fed bears in front of crowds of tourists.[20] However, with a greater awareness of ecological and other issues, such pro-feeding policies are now viewed as detrimental,[1][19][20][21] and US national parks now actively discourage animal feeding.[22]
In Canadian national parks, it is illegal to disturb or feed wildlife,[23] and
Parks Canada advises visitors not to leave out "food attractants" such as dirty dishes.[24] Ironically, the "it is unlawful to feed animals" signs may themselves become food attractants for
porcupines.[25]Road salt and
roadkill may also act as food attractants, and removing roadkill is considered good park management.[26]
Marine parks
Tourism operators often provide food to attract marine wildlife such as
sharks to areas where they can be more easily viewed. Such a practice is controversial, however, because it can create a dependency on artificial feeding, habituate animals to feeding locations, increase inter-species and intra-species aggression, and increase the spread of disease.[27] In Australia's
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, shark feeding is prohibited.[28] In
Hawaiian waters, shark feeding is permitted only in connection with traditional
Hawaiian cultural or religious activities.[29]
The feeding of wild
dolphins for tourist purposes is also controversial, and is prohibited in the US because it can alter natural hunting behaviour, disrupt social interaction, encourage the dolphins to approach or ingest dangerous objects, and endanger the person doing the feeding.[30][31] At
Monkey Mia in Western Australia, dolphin feeding is permitted under
Department of Environment and Conservation supervision.[3]
Backyards
Similar issues to those in national and state parks also apply in suburban and rural
backyards. Artificial feeding of
coyotes, deer, and other wildlife is discouraged.[9][15][32] Feeding deer, for example, may contribute to the spread of
bovine tuberculosis.[13] The feeding of birds with
bird feeders is an exception, at least in the US, even though it can sometimes contribute to spreading disease.[32][33][34] In Australia, artificial
bird feeding is viewed more negatively.[12] Instead, growing native plants that can act as a natural food source for birds is recommended.[12] Similar suggestions have been made in the US.[13]
Public spaces
Feral pigeons are often found in urban
public spaces. They are often considered environmental pests, and can transmit diseases such as
psittacosis.[11] Deliberate feeding of feral pigeons, though popular, contributes to these problems.[11]
Ducks are also commonly fed in public spaces. In an early 1970s US study, 67% of people visiting urban parks did so to feed ducks.[35] However, such feeding may contribute to water pollution and to over-population of the birds, as well as delaying
winter migration to an extent that may be dangerous for the birds.[16] Feeding foods such as white bread to ducks and geese can result in bone deformities.[13] Like pigeons, ducks may also congregate in large numbers where feeding takes place, resulting in aggression towards humans who don't have food to hand as well as towards other individuals in the group. Ducks can also be messy animals, and the cleanup of an area where they congregate is time consuming.
Traditions of feeding the animals
Some people oppose such laws claiming that animals such as pigeons can be an amenity for people who do not have company such as friends or family, and say that the laws prohibiting feeding animals in urban places must change.[36] In some countries, such as
Greece, feeding the pigeons in cities is a widespread practice.[37] Cultural hostility to feeding animals in cities and laws that ban the practice raise concerns about how humans relate to other living beings in the urban environment.[38] In some areas, feeding animals in a sustainable manner has been encouraged, as without supplementation of food from humans in addition to their natural supply, some animals, especially waterfowl such as ducks, geese and swans, have become malnourished and underweight.[39][40]
Politicians have also protested laws that ban feeding feral pigeons in cities.[38] Feral pigeons in cities existed for thousands of years but only recently in some countries humans started seeing them as a nuisance and became hostile to them.[41] In
India, feeding feral animals in cities is considered a noble act.[42] Academicians say that how humans treat animals is related to how humans treat each other and thus raise concerns about the cultural shift from seeing feral city pigeons as harmless in the 1800s to seeing them an undesirable in some countries in the 2000s.[41]
^
abTammy Lau and Linda Sitterding, Yosemite National Park in Vintage Postcards, Arcadia Publishing, 2000,
p. 125.Archived 2013-11-02 at the
Wayback Machine
^Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo, JHU Press, 2008,
ISBN0801898099, p. 35.
^
abcDarill Clements, Postcards from the Zoo, HarperCollins Australia, 2010.
^Dwyer, June (2013). "Do Not Feed the Animals: Do Not Touch: Desire for Wild Animal Companionship in the Twenty-first Century". Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. 19 (4): 623–644.
doi:
10.1093/isle/iss118.
^
abcStanley D. Gehrt, Seth P. D. Riley, and Brian L. Cypher, Urban Carnivores: Ecology, Conflict, and Conservation, JHU Press, 2010,
ISBN0801893895,
p. 231.Archived 2013-10-11 at the
Wayback Machine
^Frederick R. Adler and Colby J. Tanner, Urban Ecosystems: Ecological Principles for the Built Environment, Cambridge University Press, 2013,
ISBN0521769841,
p. 210.Archived 2017-02-22 at the
Wayback Machine
^
abDevra G. Kleiman, Katerina V. Thompson, and Charlotte Kirk Baer, Wild Mammals in Captivity: Principles and Techniques for Zoo Management, 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press, 2010,
ISBN0226440117,
p. 140.Archived 2020-06-11 at the
Wayback Machine
^
abBenson, Etienne (December 2013). "The Urbanization of the Eastern Gray Squirrel in the United States". Journal of American History. 100 (3): 691–710.
doi:
10.1093/jahist/jat353.
^
abRobert B. Keiter, To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea, Island Press, 2013,
p. 176.Archived 2013-11-27 at the
Wayback Machine
^Robert W. Sandford, Ecology and Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site, Athabasca University Press, 2009,
pp. 284–288.Archived 2013-11-02 at the
Wayback Machine
^David Williams, "Conspicuous Consumption," National Parks, April/May 2002, pp. 40–45.
^Terry Inigo-Jones, The Canadian Rockies Colourguide, James Lorimer, 2010,
p. 54.Archived 2013-10-11 at the
Wayback Machine
^Kevin Van Tighem, Wild Animals of Western Canada, Rocky Mountain Books, 2009,
p. 32.Archived 2013-10-28 at the
Wayback Machine
^Jon P. Beckmann, Anthony P. Clevenger, Marcel Huijser, and Jodi A. Hilty, Safe Passages: Highways, Wildlife, and Habitat Connectivity, Island Press, 2010,
p. 68.Archived 2013-10-11 at the
Wayback Machine
^Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, Hawaii Department of Agriculture.
"Prohibition of Shark Feeding". Archived from
the original on 2014-08-20. Retrieved 2013-07-10.
^
abStephen DeStefano, Coyote at the Kitchen Door: Living With Wildlife in Suburbia, Harvard University Press, 2010,
p. 76.
^Tom Warhol and Marcus Schneck, Birdwatcher's Daily Companion: 365 Days of Advice, Insight, and Information for Enthusiastic Birders, Quarry Books, 2010,
p. 7.Archived 2013-10-11 at the
Wayback Machine