Believe me, I hate being the spoiler, but we don't need to have only negative takeaways.

They still are real photos in a sense. Overabundance of resources is what is being exploited here, so these are still real animals doing real things, just in a way that is unnatural. The wolf and bear are still beautiful animals.

We can use this same "trick" to help us keep extra predators in our rehab clinic. Many of our birds of prey, for example, would live solitary lives and fight off strangers, but we can often share aviaries (of the same species) since with us, food is calculated and delivered so it cuts down that natural competitiveness while they are recovering. We're bending nature's rules to allow us to rehab more animals, not for likes online though.

And now that you know about some of these practices, you can better gauge what is natural behavior and be more critical (as in judging what is ethical vs questionable vs outright faked). Being empowered to make your own choices is a good thing. I see this with owls, as are some countries they can be kept as "pets."

I see photos of Bell, a very rare and beautiful melanistic barn Owl quite often. She is someone's legal "pet" and her photos are beautiful glimpses of a creature we'd rarely ever see. But I don't think owls should be pets, so I enjoy seeing her in my feed, but I won't like the photos or share them with you guys. It's legal, so I would criticize anyone outright for enjoying them, but I would like you to know that she's not a free bird.

Another classic is this Little Owl. She's the "pet" of a German lady. She stages many cute photos with her owl and dog. Again, legal, but unnatural behavior, and I like my wild animals to be wild.

With the gray areas out of the way, we have a toooooon of unbelievably talented wildlife photographers in the world who are amazing at finding animals without disturbing them or causing them to do unnatural things. I try to reasonably vet people before I share them, and I am always finding new people whose work I love.

Most people in this hobby (sport?) are dedicated to doing things ethically. They will call out bad photographers, and explain how they do their thing while being good friends to their subjects. So I wouldn't go full-on jaded. The majority of wildlife photos are still going to be harmless. But like with many things, when something looks too good to be true, maybe put a little bit of that critical eye on it. If you don't see other animal photos of the same behavior, then something might be amiss.

It sucks we have to vet every dang aspect of life, but I think the reality was we always did, were just better today at outting con artists and frauds because we have more info and examples at our fingertips to check against. And while it stinks finding out something cool is a fake or misrepresentation, me, personally, I'd always prefer to know the truth.