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I really hate to say it, but until we develop a more reliable, accurate, animal-free way to model the effects of chemicals and procedures on living creatures, it would appear that animal testing remains our best bet as we strive for life-saving medical advances.
Now, before you decide to tar and feather and run [...]
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Warning: young children should not keep hedgehogs as pets — or hamsters, baby chicks, lizards and turtles, for that matter — because of risks for disease.
That’s according to the nation’s leading pediatricians group in a new report about dangers from exotic animals.
Besides evidence that they can carry dangerous and sometimes potentially deadly germs, [...]
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Michigan’s first case of chronic wasting disease was confirmed Monday in a white-tailed deer from a privately owned facility in the state’s western Lower Peninsula.
Michigan officials have quarantined all privately owned cervid facilities and banned the movement of all privately owned deer, elk and moose.
There is no evidence that the disease exists in free-ranging, wild [...]
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Bees provide crucial pollination service to numerous crops and up to a third of the human diet comes from plants pollinated by insects. However, pollinating bees are suffering widespread declines in North America and scientists warn that this could have serious implications for agriculture and food supply. While the cause of these declines has largely [...]
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Dutch Rubicon laureate Chris Smit has concluded that small mammals, such as rabbits and mice, play a major role in the development of natural diversity. Smit researched how scrub becomes established in natural grassland. It seems that prickly shrubs are important in protecting plants and preventing animal species from grazing.
Smit has also demonstrated that natural [...]
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Researchers in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, France, Gabon, Germany, Japan, Rwanda, the United Kingdom, and the United States have found that simian foamy virus (SFV) is widespread among wild chimpanzees throughout equatorial Africa.
Recent studies have shown that humans who hunt wild primates, including chimpanzees, can acquire SFV infections. Since the long-term consequences of [...]
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Pets can serve as wonderful companions – and owning one certainly has many physical and mental health benefits.
However, with the summer months upon us, it is likely your pets will be spending more time outdoors, leaving them prone to zoonotic diseases – diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans.
A Corpus Christi, Texas, [...]
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Three people have been infected with a form of MRSA usually found in pigs, the first time any humans in Britain have been infected by an animal strain of the superbug.
The variation has been found in farm animals and humans on the Continent, causing serious [...]
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Colony Collapse Disorder, diseases, parasitic mites and other stressors continue to take a devastating toll on U.S. honey bee populations, but Pennsylvania beekeepers on average fared better than their counterparts nationally during this past winter, according to agriculture experts in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
A recent survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America found [...]
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Investigations continue into the cause of a mysterious illness that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of bats since March 2008. At more than 25 caves and mines in the northeastern U.S., bats exhibiting a condition now referred to as “white-nosed syndrome” have been dying.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently issued a Wildlife Health [...]
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