Zoonotic

It's a bad time to be an armadillo.  In fact, it's a bad time to be friends with an armadillo, especially according to the latest findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.  Roughly 20% of the U.S. armadillo population are infected with leprosy.

The last time I thought about leprosy was when I saw Ben Hur, and discussions of the recently charted trend admit that it is commonly considered an ailment from "biblical times" (additional discussion of this term will be relegated to another, much longer, blog rant).  Leprosy can be transmitted from armadillo to human, and there has been an influx of examples, especially in the Southern part of the country, that demonstrates as much.  This makes leprosy zoonotic, meaning that it is a disease that can be transferred one one species to another.  Other examples of zoonosis include rabies, Lyme disease and ringworm.  About 150 cases of armadillo related leprosy have been documented, and caught soon enough, a typical round of antibiotics addresses the symptoms.  So, not that with that armor shell and all they had an especially cuddly image to maintain, but it's definitely a bad press day for the armadillo; although, they seem generally to be taking it in stride and have yet to lose their heads over it.