food

They will start to feel less afraid of humans and start to approach them more often, expecting free handouts. By continually approaching humans, animals will start to become dependent on humans as a food source.This growing dependency on humans for food can lead to the diminishing of hunting and scavaging skills, overpopulation of a species of wildlife, and cause violent attacks on both the wild animals and the humans. Although animals that are routinely fed by humans will become more oppurtunistic of getting food from humans, the animals will probably not become completely dependable on humans in order to survive.

Many things can be done to help end wild animals become more depended on humans for food, but best thing to do is not feed them at all. It may seem like a easy and obvious answer, but it does work. Also people need to make sure that they don't throw food scraps in public areas because that will attract animals.

    Wild animals will still be able to obtain food through instinctive methods, but many of their instincts will become hindered by human involvment by acquiring handouts. Many young animals that are given out scraps of food will become less dependent on their instinctive knowledge on how to survive and acquire food. This in turn causes many deaths in wild animals.
     Overpopulation can be another backlash of animals becoming more used to humans feeding them. In Seattle, Wa, for example, the Canadian Geese have become overpopulated because they no longer migrate, but instead, stay in Seattle because of food. This has caused many problems for humans and the geese are startingto be seen as a pest. Another example of overpopulation is the Eastern Grey Squirrel that can be found all over Seattle. The squirrels have become so used to being fed by humans that many will approach humans looking for food.The enormous population of grey squirrels has also made the species become a pest to humans.

The dependablity on humans for food can also have negative effects on humans as well. Up until recently, Florida has been known for tourist companies taking people out to feed sharks in the ocean. The tourists boats would take people scuba diving and feed sharks either by hand or using some sort of device that contained food. Many people in Florida were against the idea of feeding wild sharks food because they feared the sharks wouls start to approach other boats and divers. Although there has not been any links of attacks on people to the tourist feeding boats, one can speculate that it may soon happen. If sharks start to see humans as an easy way of obtain food like the Eastern Grey Squirrel and the Canadian Geese have, there might accidental attacks on humans and large populations of sharks near beaches.

Many times when humans feed wild animals they think it will not harm the animals and instead help them survive in the wild. But sadly this idea is wrong. When humans routinely feed wild animals, especially urban wildlife, such as pigeons,squirrels, and birds, they create an easy way of animals to obtain food. This has many negative consenquences for those animals.