Humans feeding animals also negatively impacts humans. Besides losing valuable parts of our local parks, as well as possibly killing innocent wildlife, human-animal interactions can also spread disease. Animals are not the cleanest of things in nature, at least by human standards. They carry all sorts of nasty things that can cause serious illness or death. The bubonic plague (or the black plague – the one that killed half the population of Europe at one point) is a perfect example of this. Many wild animals have been known to spread this plague, not by themselves, but by what lives on the animals.In other words, Fleas and ticks. Many of those pests can be found on animals in the wild and in the wild they serve a good purpose in nature, but when they get a chance to bite a human and spread disease issues arise for the bitten. Of course, we can cure many of the diseases that are caused by flea and tick bites, but it is better to avoid getting sick at all. There are some diseases like Lyme Disease that can cause very serious problems are are very hard to cure. Some of the diseases, if not noticed or ignored, become so ingrained as to be incurable. The risk of death or possible fatal/incurable disease does not seem worth the risk of feeding a wild animal.

In addition, animals that have learned to expect food from humans become more dangerous. An animal that approaches a human expecting food and goes not get any many attack, out of hunger or the hope of getting food. Depending on the animal, this can range from scary to downright deadly. Imagine having a bear mad at you. Nothing good can come of that. Animal attacks, besides the chance of death right there, also create additional disease problems (aninmal claws and teeth are filthy) as well as making the animal a threat to more humans.