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Leprosy has been hiding out in red squirrels in Great Britain and Ireland, though the painful and disfiguring disease hasn't been transmitted between humans there for several centuries.
The endangered bushy-tailed rodents (Sciurus vulgaris) have tested positive for leprosy-causing bacteria in several locations around the British Isles, researchers report November 11 in Science.
"It goes to show that once a disease has become extinct in humans, it could still exist in the environment if there was a suitable reservoir," says study coauthor Stewart Cole, director of the Global Health Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. In this case, squirrels seem to be ideal incubators for leprosy bacteria.
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British Red Squirrels Serve as Leprosy Reservoir
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Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
-- Russell Long
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snow on Monday November 14 2016, @11:23PM
Squirrels are little assholes.
I had a bird feeder in my backyard for some time. I put it out and the birds find it in a day or two and all is going well. A couple days after that, the squirrels found it. Those fuckers would hang on the feeder all day and eat all that bird food (which isn't super cheap, especially for the good stuff that doesn't wreck your lawn). Anyways, those little fuckers emptied the entire feeder in a couple hours.
I thought that was the end of that. Feeder is empty, so the squirrels would move along. Nope! Those assholes came back the next day and saw the feeder was still empty, so they bit off all of the little legs that the birds stand on, leaving me with nothing but a tube with holes in it. Vindictive little bastards.
Last winter I had some black squirrels that found a way into my roof, and had fucking babies in there. I would hear them digging around as I watched TV, but I couldn't evict them until the babies were old enough to wander around on their own (or they would just die and rot in my roof). Once they were old enough, I got a trap and started catching them and relocating them to a park on the other side of the river.
I moved 4 of them, and now I don't have black squirrels, I have larger grey squirrels that like to burrow through my garbage like fucking raccoons.
Fuck those little assholes. I hope they do have leprosy.
(Score: 5, Funny) by edIII on Monday November 14 2016, @11:44PM
They don't have leprosy, but are storing it like little furry Machiavellian assholes to use later.
The squirrels in the UK are operating their own bio-weapons program dude! I'm telling ya, they're organized.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday November 14 2016, @11:53PM
I am a little sad Hopper Crowder didn’t win the election to eliminate the squirrel menace, but at least Big Squirrel didn’t get into the white house.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @01:17AM
Your tale of strife against squirrels fills me with mirth. :-P
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:55AM
The UK used to have red squirrels all over the place. They weren't too bad - they'd occasionally steal nuts from bird feeders, but they were pretty benign. Then someone imported grey squirrels. These were a bit passive aggressive and would move into red squirrels nests in the autumn. The red squirrels would just go and make a new nest, but wouldn't have time to store enough food for winter, so they died out over a few decades. The greys were a lot more aggressive and if they weren't so cute they'd be considered a pest on the same scale as rats. Now we're seeing black squirrels come over from Canada. These ones are really aggressive and will attack grey squirrels (and other small animals).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bootsy on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:36PM
I thought the reason Greys displaced Reds was due to the diseases the Greys carry that Reds have no immuinity to. They don't compete for the same resources. Reds like coniferous trees and Grey are deciduous tree fans. If we immunise the Reds it would be okay. At the moment they do well on Islands such as the Isle of Wight or Anglesey ( they had a policy of shooting grey squirrels). There used to be a huge population in Formby in the North West of England but they got all but wiped out by the squirrel pox in the last 10 years. If there is no disease present they can live side by side quite happily.
Also larger grey Squirrels are starting to get red patches on them. Presumably there is an advantage to having this colouring in UK woods.
Given the risk of disease the title of this comment thread is probably the last thing you should do.