Tourist interactions that involve feeding wild animals create welfare and conservation risks despite their apparent benign nature; understanding these risks enables more responsible wildlife tourism choices.
Wildlife feeding tourism creates welfare harms that are invisible to tourists who perceive the interactions as positive. Animals habituated to human food sources face elevated mortality from road traffic, loss of natural feeding behaviours, and nutritional deficiencies from unsuitable diets. The apparent boldness of habituated animals does not indicate absence of stress — cortisol monitoring shows elevated stress responses even in animals that approach humans voluntarily.