Armadillos are a popular bushmeat in the Brazilian Amazon, but handling and eating these scaly mammals could put humans at risk of leprosy, a new study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical…
Scientists have long suspected a relationship between deforestation and some infectious diseases. For instance, the 2014 Ebola crisis has been linked to logging that may have put workers and their…
Leopards are among the most widespread of all big cats, with a historical range covering large parts of Africa and Asia. Though humans have whittled away about 80 percent of…
A burned-out stump was all that remained by the time a team of virologists arrived in Méliandou in 2014. They had been hunting for the source of the deadly outbreak…
What lurks in the soil beneath your feet? In the soil beneath us live billions of organisms, ranging in size from one-celled bacteria to gophers. These critters aerate the soil,…
It is regarded as the deadliest Ebola outbreak in human history: the 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa claimed the lives of 11,325 people and resulted in 28,652 suspected, probable, and…
Great apes should be humanity’s best bet for conservation — charismatic, intelligent, strikingly familiar, with big emoting eyes. It’s hard to think of creatures with whom the public empathizes more…
The deadly yellow fever -- an infectious disease caused by a mosquito-borne virus -- has spread rapidly throughout Brazil, wiping out populations of the brown howler monkey (Alouatta guariba). Thousands of…
The legal commercial exotic animal trade is a booming enterprise that ships ornamental fish, mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians around the world. These pets, livestock and other animals can carry…
A transmissible cancer -- the devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) -- has decimated Tasmanian devil populations. The contagious cancer, first recorded in 1996, has wiped out over 90 percent of…
aria Josefa de Oliveira stands in the doorway of her home in the Imbiribeira neighborhood of Recife — a city of 3.7 million in northeast Brazil. The bars on the…
Preoccupied with snipping a saliva-soaked plant part with a scalpel and placing it in a little tube of viral transport media, veterinary epidemiologist Tierra Smiley Evans thought she was alone,…
ver the last four decades, industrial agriculture has been a boon to Southeast Asia, but it also helped destroy more than 30 percent of Borneo’s rainforest — one of the…
Conditions at wildlife markets in Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) could lead to public health “catastrophes”, a new study warns. Poor biosafety standards and high volume of wild animals illegally…
Zika virus is transmitted by a mosquito, Aedes aegypti. Mosquitoes breed in stagnant ponds. One adult Aedes mosquito can lay up to 1,000 eggs during her adult life of less…
Deforestation could be increasing risk of “monkey malaria” in humans in Malaysia, suggests a new study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases. Caused by the protozoan parasite Plasmodium knowlesi, and transmitted…
In 1996, researchers discovered a deadly cancer in Australia’s Tasmanian Devils. The transmissible cancer jumps from one Tasmanian Devil to another, and is often fatal to the animals. Since its…
Infant macaque in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler Sixty-eight percent of malaria hospitalizations in Malaysia last year were caused by a once-rare strain of the disease traditionally limited…
