Thane Maynard and I discussed the petiquette error of people forcing themselves on animals. One of the comments I forgot to make concerned the feeding frenzy people seem to have. This article talks about some of the problems humans have created in their attempts to “connect’ with animals. There really is no connection created with feeding animals–in most cases people just train animals to recognize humans as a food source and when people don’t comply they often get bit or worse.
Here is a recent report on people feeding wild gators. Even when it is posted, “Do not feed the animals” many zoos lose animals because visitors insist on breaking the rules.
In other news, this is the connection people seek the feeding strategy is one used by many wild animal trainers to prevent possessiveness and keep dependent behavior to caretakes (specifically used with predators).
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