I saw a video from a dairy farmer once explaining how his automated milking machines worked. The cows bring themselves to the machines, and as an inducement they get the tastiest feed while they’re milked. The cows wear RFID collars so the machines know which cow is which. This serves for a lot of purposes (like identifying when a cow has a teat that isn’t producing so they don’t try to milk that one) but the one that made me laugh was blocking some cows that keep trying to come back because they want the good feed. The system’s like, “no, you were here five minutes ago, you don’t need to be milked again!”

My dad use to trap animals as part of his lawn business.

He'd let them go off deeper in the woods, but there was this one opposum that he swore was coming back to the area.

He put a mark on its tail to see how much money he was making off this opossum and I think it ended up being at least 5 separate trips he made with that one opposum.

Dude wasn't trap happy he just loved tearing up yards

This is also a problem rehabbers can face! Some patients just don't want to go, they had the good life and absolutely refuse to wild back up. This is why minimizing direct handling and human socialization as much as possible is a key step.

It's easy to see why people can think of wild animals like pets when you see them act like that. We all want the same basic thing, in the end. To be comfortable.

Lik going to prison for 3 hots and a cot

Yeah it's the same thing some homeless folks do in the United States if they're sick or the weather is bad.

Commit a silly non-violent crime and let yourself get caught. Free food, medical, room and board until your court date.

Huh interesting I didn't realize this was a thing but it makes sense

Throw in some anal probing and you got yourself a deal.

I actually went to a science/nature camp as a kid where a pig part was we would catch pot guts (ground squirrels)!

Almost every animal there had been caught dozens of times. Because they would go in, get peanut butter, be shown to a counselor that would mark that they were caught, then let go. So pretty sure all of them were trap happy since a 100 traps were out in a field 4 months out of the year, every single year.

A Skinner box, you say.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

lol I never thought about that, animals can really be very smart.