I hope you had a beautiful weekend. I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind, and it’s something I feel is incredibly important for the safety of our animals and for our own safety.

I recently spoke to someone who told me they saw people feeding pineapples to monkeys at the beach. When a local told them it wasn’t allowed, they ignored the warning and kept feeding them. This is heartbreaking because it puts both the monkeys and the people who feed them in danger.

The Dangers of Feeding Wildlife

You might think feeding a monkey is a sweet thing to do, but I can promise you it isn’t. When we feed them, we teach them to rely on us for food. This makes them less afraid of people and more likely to become aggressive when they don’t get what they want. What happens when a monkey bites you? You could panic and shout about rabies, but the truth is, you’re the one who didn’t respect the wild. From my own experience, I can tell you a monkey bite is not soft—they can break the skin even through gloves.

This behavior is not only a danger to you but also to the animals. The monkeys can become a nuisance, which could lead to them being harmed. The local ladies who sell pineapples are a great example of how to handle this responsibly; they take the scraps and throw them deep into the bush, where the monkeys can find them on their own without associating humans with food.

A Hidden Danger: Your Germs

There’s another huge risk you might not think about. Let’s say you have the flu or a stomach bug. If you take a bite of food and then give a piece to a monkey, you’re transferring your germs to that animal.

In the wild, there’s no way to help an animal that gets sick. If one monkey gets the flu, the whole troop could get it. If they get a stomach bug, they could die from dehydration because they have no way to get medicine or care. When we work with animals, we take extreme precautions. We wash our hands dozens of times a day, wear gloves, and stay away if we’re sick. We even wash the food we buy for them. This is all to protect them from our germs.

Wild animals don’t have immunity to our germs. By feeding them, you could kill an entire troop just because you thought it was “sweet.”

Please, for the safety of our wildlife and for your own safety, do not feed the monkeys or any other wild animals. They can feed themselves. When you visit Sodwana, please respect our wildlife and let them be wild.