We have lived alongside other animals for as long as we’ve been human. As we’ve explored farmed animals, wildlife, companion animals, and research animals, our past and future are intricately intertwined with those of other animals, whether in our homes, in the wild, or on our plates. One of the most striking ways that our lives intersect with animals is through zoonoses — diseases passed from animals to humans.
A zoonotic disease is a disease that can be passed between animals and humans. Contact with livestock, poultry, or reptiles could put you at risk for illness caused by Salmonella, E. coli, or influenza. Encounters with wild animals, or animal bites from wild animals such as skunks or bats, can put you at risk for rabies.
A few simple preventative measures will help keep you and your family healthy while you play or work with your favorite critters:
- Wash your hands with soap and water after handling animals or any part of their environment
- Avoid touching your mouth after animal contact
- Don’t eat or drink around animals
- Keep livestock and live poultry outside of the home
- Supervise small children around animals
Fleas
Flea Diseases
Fleas transmit germs that cause disease primarily through the processes of feeding on hosts or through fecal contamination, when infected flea feces (poop; also called “flea dirt”) are scratched into an open wound.
Find more information on the CDC Website.
Hanta Virus
Hanta Virus
Hantavirus is a virus that can cause severe respiratory disease. It is spread through accidentally breathing in virus particles in dust from dry rodent urine or through contact with rodents or their droppings or nests.
Early signs in people include fever, headache, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, dizziness, and chills.
The deer mouse is the primary reservoir for hantavirus in Montana and most of the United States and Canada. Infected wild rodents do not show signs of illness, but shed the virus into the environment in their feces, urine and saliva.
For questions/concerns about this disease in humans, please call your doctor or the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS).
For questions about this disease/parasite in wildlife, please call the FWP Wildlife Health Lab at (406) 577-7882.
Rabies
Rabies
All mammals are susceptible to rabies infection. Rabies, a fatal neurologic disease in animals and humans, is caused by a virus. The rabies virus can infect most mammals, including bats; bears; beavers; deer; wild canids such as fox and coyotes; and felids such as mountain lions and bobcats; raccoons; skunks; opossums; and other small mammals. Bats and skunks are the primary wildlife reservoirs of rabies in Montana; however, the virus can infect a variety of carnivores (domestic dogs and cats, foxes, raccoons, skunks, wolves, coyotes) and bats, as well as domestic animals.
For questions/concerns about this disease in humans, please call your doctor or the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS).
For questions about this disease/parasite in wildlife, please call the FWP Wildlife Health Lab at (406) 577-7882.
Tick Diseases
Tularema
Tularemia
Tularemia can be transmitted to animals and humans by arthropods (mites, ticks, flies, midges, black flies, fleas, mosquitoes and lice), by contact with infected vertebrates, and by inhalation of feces-contaminated dust or ingestion of insufficiently cooked infected carcasses. In addition, waterborne epidemics have been reported, and F. tularensis has been found in ponds where there were epidemics among beavers in the northwestern U.S. Water may remain infectious for weeks to months following contamination. Any infected animal can serve as a source of infection for humans, however, human infections are usually the result of dressing or skinning infected rabbits. In the U.S., rabbits are the source of infection in 90% of human cases.
More information can be found at Montana FWP and the CDC
West Nile Virus
West Nile Virus
West Nile Virus is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental United States. It can cause encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and/or meningitis (inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord) It is most commonly spread to people by the bite of an infected mosquito.
More information can be found at the Montana FWP Website.