>>I know that most diseases are one host specific...but some
>>can and do cross barriers and survive and thrive in multiple
>>hosts. Else a lot of the research over the years in medicine
>>and pharmaceuticals with animals for the benefit of humans
>>would not have been possible.
>>
>>I don't know if you remember the 'swine flu'....it crossed
>>the barrier in Asia from pigs to humans, then spread. It
>>was a flu virus...
>
>Of course viral diseases can cross species barriers. But it is a rare
>phenomenon and is usually facilitated by blood to blood transfer.
>
><Vision of man bites gerbil comes to mind! :) >
Or being bitten by a gerbil who has just been separated from a
fight so they have open wounds too...
>I would be interested in any evidence you have of gerbils catching human
>colds because this is an important matter and if it happens, we need to
>educate the veterinary profession. (I mean this seriously - I take our
>role in making sure vets understand gerbils seriously).
If I have a catastrophe happen again I will take an animal and
sacrifice it before it dies for specimens for testing. I will alert
my local vet about this so he can get it freighted to Denver (or
do it myself).
Since I do things like quarrantine and nobody goes in the rodentry
except me....if someone wants to buy an animal I bring some up
to the living room for them to choose from. Then those go back
to the quarrantine room.
>What I think may happen is that humans with bacterial conditions like a
>sore throat may be able to pass on streptococcal infections but I have
>no evidence of this. Someone with the relevant facilities should be able
>to grow the necessary cultures to test this fairly easily.
Like I said, if I have something go through again I will have at least
one affected animal tested in Denver (they have the facilities up there)
for such things. And have the results posted to relevant personages
or web forums.
>BTW, I forgot to mention in my earlier message, that I have read a fair
>bit about attempts to get gerbils infected with rabies. This is because
>rabies is a major problem in Africa and affects agriculture. There have
>been many projects to study rabies in various potential host animals to
>understand how the disease is transferred from animal to animal and from
>species to species. The studies also look at how vaccination campaigns
>work. This is important because some rabies vaccines can cause some
>animals to catch an infectious form of rabies.
>
>An example of how these experiments work is one that I remember. Wild
>animals, including gerbils were captured in Africa and checked to see if
>they had rabies. Feed stuffs, containing an oral vaccine were left out
>for animals to eat. Animals were captured to se if the level of rabies
>had gone up or down. At no point in any of these studies has any gerbil
>had rabies.
>
>I am certainly not saying that gerbils cannot get rabies, but studies
>from all over the world looking for rabid gerbils has ever found any!
>
>(On the other hand - wild gerbils in Africa and Asia are known to carry
>Bubonic Plague, a bacterial infection).
We've had that show up in the city squirrels repeatedly, last summer
was particularly bad for them. They told everyone where they were
being found and having people that seen a dead one to call a number
to be picked up by the city (and they would test it) and the city was
also catching live ones and testing...
No cases of humans catching it from squirrels here yet.
