Predator or provider? How wild animals respond to mixed messages from humans

Wild animals encounter humans on a regular basis, but humansvary widely in their behaviour: whereas many people ignorewild animals, some people present a threat, while othersencourage animals’presence through feeding. Humans thussend mixed messages to which animals must respondappropriately to be successful. Some species appear tocircumvent this problem by discriminating among and/orsocially learning about humans, but it is not clear whethersuch learning strategies are actually beneficial in most cases.Using an individual-based model, we consider how learningrate, individual recognition (IR) of humans, and social learning(SL) affect wild animals’ability to reach an optimal avoidancestrategy when foraging in areas frequented by humans. Weshow that‘true’IR of humans could be costly. We also findthat a fast learning rate, while useful when human populationsare homogeneous or highly dangerous, can cause unwarrantedavoidance in other scenarios if animals generalize. SL reducesthis problem by allowing conspecifics to observe benigninteractions with humans. SL and a fast learning rate alsoimprove the viability of IR. These results provide an insightinto how wild animals may be affected by, and how they maycope with, contrasting human behaviour