Hundreds of millions of legally and illegally imported exotic pets are flooding into the USA and Europe every year. An animal can be happily living in a jungle in Asia, South America or Africa one day, and find itself in a cage in some little girl’s bedroom in less than 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. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA says that zoonotic diseases account for around three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases today.

This article is about some of the diseases your pet hedgehog may 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. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 1 in 20 of all infections are passed to people by 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 hedgehog breeders who kept a herd of about 80 hedgehogs. It is significant that the girl did not have any physical contact with the hedgehogs. The girl was infected 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. Rabies prevention laws normally mean that imported hedgehogs would spend six months a government approved facility before they can be imported into the UK.

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.

Along with the disease side of the story, it also exemplifies just what may occur when you purchase your pet from less than honest dealers or breeders. Although the breeder has said she will pay the vet’s fees, after six months the new owners have not received 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.

Even though the real risk of being infected by your pet is relatively small, owners should keep it in mind when handling their pets. The advice and information you’ll find on the CDC site will greatly reduce the risk of infection.