385
‘Zombie deer disease’ epidemic spreads in Yellowstone as scientists raise fears it may jump to humans
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
385 points (98.2% liked)
News
35703 readers
3718 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We’re actually not sure about that. Some prions do spread by eating the meat of infected animals, but I think we can be pretty sure that’s not what’s happening in a wild deer population. Prions can also be found in the environment, including deposited on grasses and plants, where that can last a very long time.
We do not know if this disease is or will become communicable to predator animals or what the potential is for environmental spread to livestock. We do know a bit more about the BSE than some others, but there’s a bunch we know exist that we know little to nothing about, and it’s guaranteed there’s more out there that we haven’t encountered yet.
Deer can and do eat meat when available
Occasionally they do consume meat as far as I know (as several herbivores do), but if that were a serious candidate it would be among the principle lines of transmission being investigated.
Zoonotic diseases are investigated by cross-disciplinary teams with experience ranging from public health and disease experts to wildlife biologists and ecologists. I did some work on a similar topic with the National Parks Service so I know a bit about how these are approached. I have no involvement with this and I’ve never worked on prion contagion models - like I said, we just don’t know. But I do have experience in the area.
Prions have been found in soil, on grass and plants, and do not get quickly degraded by sun and rain. We do know that this disease is density dependent, so you’d need a model of deer going carnivore and cannibal in a density dependent natural model, which is not a phenomenon I’m familiar with.
So what I’m saying is that we just don’t know what the deer-deer vector is or if a predation vector exists as a secondary transmission or if one will appear.
Cool information thanks. Yeah wasn't trying to say that that's definitely how it's spread but most people don't know that they're opportunistic carnivores!