Why Feeding Wildlife is Dangerous

Originally posted on my blog at https://rebeccalexa.com/feeding-wildlife-dangerous/

Winter is here in the Northern Hemisphere, which means that wild animals of all sorts are falling back on cold weather adaptations that have evolved over countless generations. Some, like reptiles and amphibians, go into brumation or other hibernation-like states. Others have warm feathers or fur to insulate them as they go about their lives in chilly conditions. They may migrate around their territory in search of various food sources. Not all will survive these harsh months, which makes feeding wildlife to help them through the hard times a tempting idea.

Unfortunately, while this is a kind-hearted act born of good intentions, the impact is all too often harmful. Here are a few of the damaging, even deadly, effects of feeding wildlife.

First, let’s be a little more nuanced about the definition of wildlife in this case. I support the feeding of birds, at least those that commonly visit bird feeders. These birds are of species that are used to their food sources–like seeds, berries, and insects–being temporary, and so they retain their ability to forage for food in various places. Also, because the birds are not being fed by hand, and tend to retain their natural fear of humans, they are not likely to become habituated to us. It should go without saying that trying to convince birds to eat from your hand, or otherwise stop being afraid of you, is a bad idea (more about that in a minute.) And, of course, you need to make sure to keep your feeders clean and watch your local birds very carefully for any signs of disease; here’s an article I wrote on feeding birds safely and ethically. 

Wild mammals, on the other hand, have a tendency to become dependent on human sources of food much more readily than birds. If you leave food scraps, pet food, or trash out where they can access it, they quickly figure out that this is an easy meal, and will hang around more than birds might.

Some birds will be more easily habituated than others; ducks and geese, for example, will lose their fear of humans as quickly as mammals do, especially when being fed regularly at ponds or lakes. So consider this article to primarily cover wild mammals, waterfowl, and any other animal that can be easily habituated through feeding.

A good example of what NOT to do. 

Habituation is the biggest behavior change seen in fed wildlife. A habituated animal is simply one that no longer fears humans, and sees us as a source of food handouts. Unlike normal, healthy wildlife, these animals do not run away when a human approaches, even at a close distance. As mentioned above, this means they may even become aggressive in seeking food, and people have been bitten, scratched, gored, or otherwise injured by habituated animals. It may be easy to see why a habituated bear or moose is dangerous, but even smaller animals like squirrels or raccoons have a very nasty, painful bite or scratch. Some also carry zoonotic diseases that can be passed to humans; rabies is the most notorious, but even a bacterial infection caused by the bite or scratch can be an unpleasant experience.

But this lack of fear isn’t just a threat to us. It also puts the wildlife at risk. Wild mammals that wander through our neighborhoods in search of food are more likely to be hit by cars, attacked by outdoor dogs or cats, and injured or killed by cruel humans. If hunting is allowed in the area, the animal may walk right up to a hunter. Plus wild animals that become a nuisance or threat to people are sometimes euthanized, as relocated animals often end up finding their way back to their original territory, or go find a new group of humans to mooch off of.

Feeding wildlife can also cause them to cease natural foraging behaviors. Not only does this mean they may starve if the humans in the area stop feeding them, but they don’t teach their young proper foraging either, and so you may have animals several generations down the line that no longer know how to find natural food sources in the area.

Also, what we're feeding wildlife can kill them.

So here’s the thing: humans are omnivores. Actually, we’re sort of super omnivores; we have one of the most varied diets of any species, especially now that we’re able to grow all sorts of domesticated crops, including but not limited to two dozen cultivars of wild mustard (Brassica oleracea), various and sundry grains, legumes, tubers, etc. And because we’ve spread all throughout the planet, we’ve successfully sampled thousands upon thousands of edible animals, plants, and fungi. We’ve managed to evolve tolerances to substances some plants produce to keep from being eaten, like caffeine and capsaicin, and some of us go out of our way to seek them. We’ve also heavily altered some of our foods through cooking, to include some methods that render the food quite unhealthy even for us (not that that stops us from eating it anyway.)

All of this means that over 300,00 years of existence, Homo sapiens has evolved the ability to eat a truly mind-boggling array of foods. Unfortunately, even the other omnivores in our lives can’t necessarily tolerate the foods we eat. Domestic dogs evolved alongside us, eating first our refuse, and then sharing our meals, for thousands of years. Yet they still can’t safely eat chocolate, avocado, onions, or grapes, and some things we’ve created like the artificial sweetener xylitol can also be harmful–even deadly–to dogs.

So when you put out a plate of table scraps for your local squirrels, opossums, raccoons, or even bears, there’s a very good chance that something there is going to make them sick. You could even be sentencing one of your visitors to death! Even if they don’t immediately get sick, over time eating the wrong foods could seriously affect the health of wildlife, and may lead to sickness and an earlier, unpleasant death.

Sometimes, even something that seems like the “right” food can be deadly. Deer species in North America are adapted to eating lots of woody vegetation in winter; their gut microbiome is perfectly balanced to digest this tough food. However, some people like to feed them corn, either because they want to be nice, or because they want to hunt the deer. Unfortunately, the nutritional makeup of corn is very different from the deer’s winter fare. The carbohydrates in the corn can cause a condition called rumen acidosis. This overloading of carbs causes Streptococcus bacteria, which occur naturally in the deer’s chambered stomach, to overpopulate in a matter of hours. This raises the acidity of the stomach, and kills off many of the other microbes in the gut flora. This sudden imbalance essentially causes the stomach to stop digestion altogether. In a severe enough case, the deer dies a horribly painful death within twenty-four hours. Deer that survive often have permanently damaged stomachs, which can lead to worse health overall and a shortened lifespan.

Every ecosystem has adapted over thousands of years; in some cases, an ecosystem may be millions of years old (with some changes in species makeup, of course.) Over that time, species have evolved to keep each other’s numbers in check, whether through consuming each other, competing for resources, or spreading disease to other species as well as their own. One of the biggest limiting factors in a species’ habitat is the amount of food that’s available. You’ll generally have fewer large predators in a place than large herbivores, for example, because the land can support a lot more plants to feed herbivores than herbivores to feed carnivores.

So the ecosystem is able to keep its species in balance; any time a species begins to overpopulate, predation, starvation and disease tend to knock the numbers back. Some species even have “boom or bust” population cycles; lemmings, for example, are thought to have population fluctuations tied to the number of ermine preying on them in a given area.

But when we humans artificially change the availability of food in a given place, we can cause serious disruptions in these natural checks and balances. Put too much food in a place over time, and you end up with overpopulations of the animals that eat that food, with subsequent deaths from disease due to overcrowding, and starvation when the population inevitably outgrows even the artificially added food.

By John Davis, CCA-2.0

Speaking of disease, when feeding wildlife many people just dump the food in the same place every day or night, whether that’s pet bowls, a trash can, or a feeding site. This causes wildlife to congregate in unnaturally large numbers and on a regular basis, which again leads to increased disease transmission. Keep in mind that wildlife don’t have veterinarians they can just go to when sick, so you end up with wild animals dying some pretty slow, awful deaths due to these diseases. (And yes, this can happen with birds–again, why it is so incredibly important to properly clean your feeders regularly!)

I know it’s tempting to entice wildlife closer, and to want to help them through tough times. But it is incredibly important to keep a firm boundary between us and wild animals. We’ve already interfered in their lives and their behaviors enough. The more we meddle, the more harm we do to them, even if our intentions were good.

But wildlife are not pets. They are their own beings with their own lives and agendas, instincts and territories. They are, as Henry Beston wrote in The Outermost House, “not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” And we respect them best when we give them their space and allow them to live as wild a life as possible in a world we have so dramatically changed.

If you want to create the best world for your local wildlife, create habitat and natural food sources for them. Remove invasive species, and plant more native plants, especially those that offer food and shelter to wildlife. (The native plant finder is a great starting point for those in the US.) Work to protect what wildlife habitat is left, especially habitats that are relatively undamaged like old-growth forests. This way you are helping to maintain space where these species can live the lives they have lived for many thousands of years without our interference.

Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!

Anomalous Item #4742: A set of 173 VHS tapes with blank labels.

When a tape label is filled out (there are provided fields for title, director, and year) and then placed into any functioning VCR, the film listed will play, regardless of if it existed before the tape was played.

This was first believed to be an effect limited to the tapes, ie, the tapes were somehow generating the movie themselves through some method similar to AI art generation, but after initial tests were performed the paratime division discovered the effect is actually antichronological: when played, the tapes don't simply create the movie named, they alter the past so that the movie mentioned was created.

Thus, after a tape is labeled and played, it can be found on streaming services and in DVD rental stores. The directors, if still alive, will recall making the film, and actors who were active at the time the film was "made" will have anecdotes about events that happened in the film.

This can have ripple effects as well; during the 9th test, the film Big Trouble in Little China, 1986, directed by John Carpenter, was created. Besides the immediate effects of creating a new film that hadn't existed, an indirect effect was that the film Alien 2, 1985, John Carpenter, ceased to exist. Instead, the sequel to the 1979 film Alien (directed by Ridley Scott) was titled Aliens and directed by James Cameron. It's believed that by adding a new movie to the timeline of John Carpenter's direction, he no longer had time to direct one of the works he had directed in the original timeline, as he would have been busy directing the newly-added film, and directing roles therefore passed to another director.

Use of the tapes can also implicitly affect the lifespan of directors. In test #17, Researcher J. Calhoun attempted to generate a film that couldn't possibly exist: a prequel to a film made by a director who had died decades beforehand.

According to paratime research, the writing of "Star Wars: Episode 1, 1999, George Lucas" on the tape and the subsequent viewing undid the 1981 death of Mr. Lucas, causing Star Wars: Episode 6: Revenge of the Jedi to come out in 1983 instead of 1985, be titled "Return of the Jedi" instead, and it would be directed by George Lucas instead of Steven Spielberg.

This obviously had additional effects as it didn't merely extend the lifespan of George Lucas by an additional 18 years: at time of writing in 2022, he is still alive at the age of 78. It's therefore believed that the object doesn't unnaturally extend the lifespan of the director, it instead reshapes the flow of time so that any events that would stop them from filming the listed movie do not happen.

After discovery of their history altering nature, the remaining anomalous objects have been locked in secure storage at site #22. No further testing is authorized, and emergency use requires level #6 authorization, which will only be granted in the face of imminent disaster requiring paratime remedies.

Article update[2022-11-20]: an incident occurred where it was discovered that former researcher K. Synnol had acquired one of the tapes (see investigation document 2483 for details) and was attempting to use it for history modification, without approval. The paratime division detected the impending history alteration and an assault team was dispatched. Synnol was apprehended before they could complete the use of the tape, however the label WAS filled out but the tape remained unwatched. What effects, if any, the partial use of the anomalous artifact would have on the timeline is unknown, but in previous testing the film only came into being when the labeled tape was placed into a VCR and watched.

See photo attachment #2, below, for artifact 1B, recovered after the Synnol event.

More than one person has said "this should be an SCP!"

I don't write in other people's fiefdoms, but you're welcome to adapt this story as needed to make it one. You've got my permission to use the text and image for that, and to modify it in whatever ways needed.

hello fish community can someone explain the coelacanth obsession. not that i dont also love them, they are Such Guys, but there is an entire coelacanth FANDOM on this webbed site and i must know where this beautiful thing came from. i know they're really really old and pretty big and that's about it

Reading sports headlines while pretending sports doesn't exist suggests a fascinating world of magic and whimsy.

Lotta notes here like “OK I don’t like sports but” and sure, yeah. I get it. Attractive, fit young men engaging in feats of strength and skill, with high emotional stakes, in a way that makes them hate each other but also understand each other in a way no one else can, no, definitely not Tumblr’s kind of thing, I get it.

Bros. BROS.

It has not been heaven in any way for the Jets this year.

🎥 by mayaxs

@idontevenhaveone

Thinking of making one of those "[BIG CITY] MENTIONED" anime girl memes for edmonton but have no idea whats even unique to edmontonians

The river valley? WEM? Whyte ave? Antique stores? Getting stabbed in the subway? Unidentified bodily fluids on the sidewalk? Those last 2 things could also be new york except theres no rats here

Our great city of weird pile of silver balls on the roadside of a random highway that a guy got stuck in once and michael j fox

Wait does tumblr know about the edmonton ball pile

This thing is, allegedly, a sculpture of some kind. It hangs out on the side of a random highway nowhere near the city center, which you can vaguely see in the distant horizon of this photo. It apparently cost 600k to make and install, and no one knows what the hell is up with it. Its just there. Hanging out. You get a glance of it on your way to the west side for half a second and it always leaves you with the question "why is that thing here?" Last year a guy tried to climb onto it and ended up falling in because apparently the silver balls are completely hollow and not very structurally sound for 600k of materials left in a big pile, so he got drunk one night edmonton style and climbed on top and then just fell straight in like some kind of portal to the mirror ball realm. The fire department had to cut him out of the side of it and he ended up getting charged with I think it was mischief but I dont think people should go to jail for objectively funny crimes. He made his buddy's photo of him stuck in the balls his pfp on facebook if you look him up. Also there is no visible sign of damage to the balls that one can see from their intended viewpoint of car on highway from the whole ordeal. I think they healed like flesh

Some highlights from the news article about said incident

And the guys facebook pfp in case you thought i was kidding:

the current electoral system is an unfairly weighted corrupt mess that will not save us, but

there is no materially revolutionary argument against voting if you are at all able.

so true king

favorite hobby when I'm driving is to catch someone trying to climb up my back bumper while I'm going a completely reasonable speed and just slowly take my foot off the gas. you seem upset, brother. why don't we slow down and enjoy the view awhile

I'd like to add, just on the off chance that someone who tailgates reads this, that tailgating is not doing you any favors. The sheer degree of attention and reactivity and focus you have to maintain in order to tailgate without fucking hitting the person is so much. You're stressing yourself out. You're making your day worse. You're decreasing your lifespan (both statistically by increasing risk and literally by being stressed the hell out). You're fucking up your brakes. You're wasting gas. You aren't going any faster. If you do hit them, it's 100% legally your fault and you won't get away with it. And to cap it all off, the person ahead of you has a solid chance of just slowing down. Keep a comfortable buffer distance. When they pass something it should take at least two seconds before you pass it. More, if you can help it at higher speeds. The few seconds you might save by tailgating are absolutely not worth it.

Whenever someone tailgates me I start slowing down. Just slower and slower. Not only to piss them off, but also because if some idiot is going to fucking rear-end me, I'd rather it happen at 40mph than 60mph.

tunblr is an idling game wherein you plant seeds (make poasts) and then come back a few hours later to harvest the resultant crops (replies from users with picrew icons and hyphenated urls demonstrating a complete lack of empathy and/or reading comprehension)

☝️this line from @dagny-hashtaggart deserved to be preserved. applicable to a good like 30% of tumblr posts.

my aunt who owns horses constantly posts these excellent horse memes

I’LL TAKE A HAMMER AND FIX THE BABY

Bear in mind that this is a technique that anyone can use on anyone about anything.

For example, you probably want to be suspicious when megacorporations start rebranding themselves as "diverse" and "sustainable".

a theme I am noticing during my journey through the filmography of david tennant is that he is bitchless. he is just not getting any bitches. sometimes he starts off with a wife but she gets murdered. sometimes he has a gf but he fumbles it real bad and she gets stuck in a parallel universe or dies of tuberculosis while he's goofing off. sometimes he asks a woman to sleep with him and she straight up laughs in his face and leaves. sometimes he resorts to evil mind control in a failed attempt to get bitches.

if he starts off single he is ending up single. except for good omens, where he starts off single and ends up divorced

possibly Much Ado is the exception, but I would argue that in that play Benedick is the bitch