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Comment by slicktux | Hacker News Reader

I recall being on a road trip and was at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains; was getting ready to camp at a random camp site and noticed a sign warning or squirrels that carry bubonic plague via fleas… Scary..

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It’s not usually very bad. My wife used to do epidemiology in Utah, and the four corner states have a few plague cases every year. Very easy to get from prairie dogs as well. Iirc, prairie dog colonies are separated based on which ones have the plague and which don’t.

> Iirc, prairie dog colonies are separated based on which ones have the plague and which don’t.

Do you mean 'naturally' by their own selection, or some external means?

I read it as someone keeps track of it for public safety

I’m guess doge cut took that away…

It's done at state level, by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources for one, so it is possible that federal government damage has not affected it.

This is what I meant

I hope that the black footed ferret reintroduction efforts are successful (https://www.fws.gov/project/black-footed-ferret-recovery). There would be a lot less plague out there if so.

Lime disease has a similar relationship with predators that eat mice, so let's also keep an eye out for the owls and snakes.

How would reintroducing the black footed ferret reduce the plague ? It's not stated in that link.

Possibly by reducing prairie dog numbers and concentration

They reduce the density of prairie dogs.

Wouldn’t the end up floating into the air?

Where they are eaten by bald eagles. What more American solution could we ask for? I mean, aside from using the floating doggies for target practice.

BFFs eat prairie dogs.

Reducing prairie dog concentrations, and most often killing the weaker slower ones, which are likely infected and showing the most symptoms.

Reduces spread and increases evolutionary pressure to increase resistance and possibly even become immune.

Wonder if the same fleas that affect prarie dogs will also be at home on them?

I wonder also, although I kind of doubt it. As predators, they maintain relatively low population densities and are typically the first to go extinct when things get weird.

Selection would favor pathogens that instead specialize for hosts that are hard to get rid of. Mice, cockroaches, prairie dogs...

>Lime disease Ah yes, good old Lime Disease, named after the town it was invented in, "Lime, Connecticut", Abraham Lime 1898, former student of Koch's lab in Germany.

When you say it's easy to get from prairie dogs, how exactly does that happen? Is it like, you're camping, and a prairie dog gets into your tent? How exactly does that people get exposed to a prairie dog?

It's not the prairie dogs themselves, but the fleas on the dogs. The carriers for the plague are fleas.

Yes, but every case I've heard of involved direct contact with the prairie dog. I can't imagine the fleas are that mobile without them.

It’s pretty easy to get close to prairie dogs over time. They will eventually learn you’re not a threat, and tell the others.

So you’re going on a walk one day, they seem friendly, people like handling cute animals… bada big bada boom

It's usually people whose job (or I guess hobby) involves managing prairie dogs. It's not usually ordinary civilians.

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