Do not feed the animals

The prohibition "do not feed the animals" reflects a policy forbidding the artificial feeding of wildlife (wild or feral animals) in situations where the animals, or the people doing the feeding, might be harmed. Signs displaying this message are commonly found in zoos, circuses, animal theme parks, aquariums, national parks, parks, public spaces, farms, and other places where people come into contact with wildlife. In some cases there are laws to enforce such no-feeding policies. However, some people (such as some of those who enjoy feeding pigeons in cities) openly and strongly 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. In some countries, such as Greece, feeding the pigeons in cities is a widespread practice. 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. Politicians have also protested laws that ban feeding feral pigeons in cities. 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. In India, feeding feral animals in cities is considered a noble act. 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 a undesirable in some countries in the 2000s.

In zoos, giving food to the animals is discouraged due to the strict dietary controls in place. More generally, artificial feeding can result in, for example, vitamin deficiencies and dietary mineral deficiencies. Another motivation is the concern that animals will become accustomed to ingesting foreign objects and might later ingest something harmful. 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. Feeding can also alter animal behavior so that animals routinely travel in larger groups, which can make disease transmission between animals more likely. In public spaces, the congregation of animals caused by feeding can result in them being considered pests. Artificial feeding can also lead to animals aggressively seeking out food from people, sometimes resulting in injury.

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Wikipedia