Disease Ridden Hedgehogs?
Hundreds of millions of legally and illegally imported exotic pets are flooding into the USA and Europe every year. One day an unsuspecting animal could be contentedly hopping around in Asia, Africa or South America and suddenly find itself transferred half way across the world and in some child’s bedroom inside a week. Often a lot of these pets do not go through any quarantine procedures and allowed into the country and our homes after cursory health screening. These new owners are ignorant of the fact that their pets could damage the health of themselves and their families.
Zoonotic Diseases
Zoonotic diseases are those that can jump from animals to humans. In the USA today, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that zoonotic diseases are responsible for 75% of all emerging infectious diseases.
Let’s look at just some of the disease your hedgehog could give you.
A CDC study from 2005 lists an alarming number of confirmed and potential zoonotic diseases that pet and wild hedgehogs can carry. The confirmed diseases include Salmonella, Yersina, pseudotubercolosis, Mycobacterium marinum, Herpesvirus including human herpes simplex and Rabies. The potential diseases they can carry include Yersina pestis (also responsible for Bubonic plague) and hemorrhagic fever.
Salmonella
Salmonella is normally contracted from contaminated food. However the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes that 5% of infections are caused by contact with exotic pets. For example they estimate that nearly eighty thousand Americans contract Salmonella from their pet reptiles every year.
In 1994 African Pygmy Hedgehogs were responsible for passing on a rare form of Salmonella (S. tilene), to a 10 month old girl who became the first ever confirmed case of this serotype in a human in the USA. Her family bred hedgehogs and had a herd of 80 hedgehogs. It is significant that the girl did not have any physical contact with the hedgehogs. The infection was spread to her by a family member. The same type of Salmonella has since been confirmed in many other cases.
Ringworm
Despite its name ringworm or Tinea is not a worm but is actually a fungal skin infection. One source of ringworm is known to be pet and wild hedgehogs. Over the past few months HedgehogsAsPets.com has been covering a story where three people were infected with ringworm by two hoglets bought from the same breeder.
This tale is all the more intriguing as the breeder concerned managed to avoid Britain’s severe quarantine rules and brought a number of pet hedgehogs into the country from Germany. Hedgehogs imported into the UK would normally be required to spend 6 months in government approved facilities.
In this story the breeder claims that the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) put aside their normal procedures and permitted her to quarantine her new pets in her house, (which incidentally was already a veritable zoo containing snakes, lizards, rats, other hedgehogs and sugar gliders). The breeder later learned that the German breeder’s herd was infected with ringworm, but not before she had spread the disease from the “German” hedgehogs to her breeding pair. The offspring of these latter were sold and went on to infect three people with ringworm.
This case also illustrates some of the dangers of buying pets from dishonest dealers and breeders. Over the past six months the breeder in question has promised to pay part of the new owners’ vet’s fees but they have yet to see a penny-.
Reducing the risk of infection
To reduce the risk of infection simply go to this site and follow the advice they give there: http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/browse_by_animal.htm.
Purchasing your pet from a reputable breeder instead of a pet store, should provide you with more guarantees about the origins of the animal.
While the risk of catching some terrible disease from your pet is quite small, owners must be aware that it does exist. Follwing the advice on the CDC site will help you to reduce the risk of infection to a minimum.