Warnings that ‘slow-moving disaster’ in North America raises chances of fatal mad cow-type disease jumping species barrier

When the mule deer buck died in October, it perished in a place most humans would consider the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road. But its last breaths were not taken in an isolated corner of American geography. It succumbed to a long-dreaded disease in the backcountry of Yellowstone national park, north-west Wyoming – the first confirmed case of chronic wasting disease in the country’s most famous nature reserve.

For years, chronic wasting disease (CWD), caused by prions – abnormal, transmissible pathogenic agents – has been spreading stealthily across North America, with concerns voiced primarily by hunters after spotting deer behaving strangely.

The prions cause changes in the hosts’ brains and nervous systems, leaving animals drooling, lethargic, emaciated, stumbling and with a telltale “blank stare” that led some to call it “zombie deer disease”. It spreads through the cervid family: deer, elk, moose, caribou and reindeer. It is fatal, with no known treatments or vaccines.

  • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    5 years or so ago I would be WTFing at this headline and sending the article to everyone. Now my reaction is just ‘Yeah sure why the fuck not.’

    • roguetrick@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      Oh this has been cooking for much more than 5 years and really has been quite prevalent since the aughts. With deer’s proclivity to scavenging the bodies and gut piles that hunters leave of other deer, as well as the fact that carrion birds that eat the corpses will let the prions spread right through their digestive system into the environment, its spread is inevitable.