This is one way to limit diseases among a wild population. Many wild animals do not interact with others of their own species except during mating season and when raising their young. This means that if one animal in the group has an illness or disease, it can spread throughout the group. Who doesn’t like a free meal? When food is readily available, animals will gather in abnormally large numbers. A constant, human-provided food source may attract many more wild animals to the area than would normally be found there.Because most people will feed animals food that they have in their house – people food – which bears no resemblance to what the animals eat in the wild, it really is junk food to the animals. Just like humans, most wild animals need a variety of foods in their diet, and if they fill up on “junk” food, they will not get the nutrients they need to stay healthy. When a constant human-provided food source is available, animals who would normally have a varied diet may switch to eating mainly this constantly available food. Most wild animals are opportunistic and will concentrate on the easiest food source available. The food humans usually feed to wild animals is not nutritionally complete, and it can cause serious health problems for the animals, especially when they are young and still developing.An instinctive wariness of people is important to a wild animal’s survival. They also become easy targets for kids with BB guns and others who mean them harm. Animals who are unafraid of people will approach them for food, and are sometimes mistaken as rabid, aggressive or mean, then killed for that behavior. Wild animals who are used to being fed by humans commonly lose their fear of people.Animals who are raised relying on humans for food may struggle to survive in the absence of that artificial food source when they disperse from their parents’ territory. When young wild animals are taught to depend on a human-provided food source, they may not fully develop essential foraging skills.There are many good reasons not to feed wildlife including: While seeing wild animals up close can be enjoyable, providing wild animals with a steady, human-supplied food source nearly always leads to problems for both the animals and humans. Many people enjoy feeding wildlife because it allows them to have close contact with the animals, or because they believe they are helping the animals survive.
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