The United States is the world’s largest wildlife importer, and imported wild animals represent a potential source of zoonotic pathogens. Using data on mammals imported during 2000–2005, we assessed their potential to host 27 selected risk zoonoses and created a risk assessment that could inform policy making for wildlife importation and zoonotic disease surveillance.
All vectors of human malaria, a disease responsible for more than one million deaths per year, are female mosquitoes from the genus Anopheles. Evarcha culicivora is an East African jumping spider (Salticidae) that feeds indirectly on vertebrate blood by selecting blood-carrying female mosquitoes as preferred prey.
Raccoons create latrines, particular locations that visit they repeatedly. While this practice may be sanitary for the animals, humans – particularly small children prone to putting strange objects in their mouths – can contract a deadly, parasitic roundworm when they encounter these animal outhouses.
Albinism is one of the few visible genetic “aberrations” humans share with other animals. This distinctive lack of pigment displayed by albino animals, along with the beauty and rarity of its presentation, has given rise to numerous myths, legends and practices, not all of them positive in tone. You can read the full story HERE.
In the movies, a savvy hero saves the victim of a rattler by quickly ripping up a shirt to use as a tourniquet, then sucking the venom from the wound. In real life, forget it.
Everyone knows scorpions are poisonous, but what about Slow Loris? Those cute and cuddly primates you see all over the web? The Stonefish is cool looking, but did you know it could pack a wollop? Keep your distance from all these critters, because these are some surprisingly toxic animals!
The race is on to save Australia’s iconic Tasmanian Devil from being wiped out by a hideous facial cancer. Some 70 percent of devils have already been lost to the infectious disease, which is spread by biting.
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