Hedgehogs can be Hazardous to your Health
Hundreds of millions of legally and illegally imported exotic pets are flooding into the USA and Europe every year. A future exotic pet may be running around in an African desert one day and find itself transported across the world to some family’s living room in say, Denver, within 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. Unfortunately a lot of owners know nothing about the health risks posed by their cuddly new pets.
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.
So what kinds of diseases could your pet hedgehog be carrying.
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. The girl’s family were pet hedgehog breeders and she shared the house with a herd of around eighty hedgehogs. It should be noted that the little girl never touched the hedgehogs herself. She was infected by a family member who had handled the hedgehogs. The same serotype was later diagnosed 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.
The story becomes even more disconcerting when it transpires that the person in question had somehow evaded Britain’s stringent quarantine regulations and managed to import several hedgehogs directly into the UK from Germany. Normally, in the UK, imported hedgehogs would be subject to six months quarantine in a government recognised establishment.
What’s very strange about this case is that the breeder in question claims that the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) permitted her to quarantine her new imports at home, in a house that already contained, rats, snakes, lizards, sugar-gliders, hedgehogs and cats and dogs. Subsequently before it was learned that the German breeder’s herd was infected with ringworm, she had managed to spread the disease to the parents of the two hoglets that she later sold and infected three other people.
Apart from the ringworm aspect of the case, it is also an example of what can go wrong if you buy your pets from dodgy 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.
