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State public health veterinarian Paul Ettestad said plague can be present in fleas that infest wild rodents in Santa Fe County, including within the city limits of Santa Fe and in other locations around New Mexico. "Pets that are allowed to roam and hunt can bring infected fleas from dead rodents back into the home, putting you and your children at risk," he said. Health workers are conducted environmental investigations around the homes of the three patients to look for ongoing risk and to ensure the safety of the immediate family members and neighbors."

For four years, photographer Louis-Marie Preau would lie motionless underwater for hours at a time to get this perfect shot of a Eurasian beaver carrying a branch back to its lodge. Equally as impressive as Preau's efforts were the efforts to pull these delightful creatures back from near extinction. Via bioGraphic: Prized for both their fur and their castoreum—a scent-gland secretion once believed to cure everything from headaches to hysteria, Eurasian beavers were nearly hunted to extinction by the middle of the 19th century. In France, the species (Castor fiber) was nearly wiped out entirely, with the exception of a...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Health officials are investigating how a rare rat virus called the Seoul virus infected eight people in Wisconsin and Illinois. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services says all eight people had direct contact with rats at Illinois and Wisconsin ratteries, which are rat-breeding facilities.

DELTONA, FL (WKMG/CNN) - A squirrel got into a retirement home, injuring at least three people and prompting a call to 911 on Thursday. "It's jumping on people and biting them and scratching them," the 911 caller said. "It's still in there, and people are bleeding." People can be heard in the background asking each other if they are all right. The attack happened around 2 p.m., the woman telling dispatch people are bleeding and need help. "I don' t know if we need an ambulance, but we need some care for people here," the 911 caller said. "The people...

Capybara are real damn cute. Look at this bugger. In fact, capybara are so endearing, that some people may have been importing them to own as pets. This might explain why the 100-pound rodents, which are native to South America’s marshlands, have been showing up in places where they don’t belong. According to biologist Elizabeth Congdon, an assistant professor at Bethune-Cookman University, the state of Florida could have a serious capybara problem—and it might be the fault of exotic pet owners.

US Fish and Wildlife Service to target diseased prairie dogs, food for the ferrets, via specially designed drones that shoot the candies in three directions at once The US government is set to unleash drones that fire vaccine-covered M&Ms in a bid to save the endangered black-footed ferret, a species that is facing a plague epidemic across America’s great plains. The US Fish and Wildlife (FWS) has developed a plan to bombard ferret habitat in Montana with the vaccine, which will be administered via specially designed drones that will be able to shoot M&Ms in three directions simultaneously. The vaccines...

The Bramble Cay melomys has become more famous in extinction than it ever was in life. A mouse-like rodent, the melomys amazingly survived on a 3.6 hectare grass-covered cay (a low-lying island in a coral reef) in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef like a ratty Robinson Crusoe for thousands of years. There, it thrived off just a few plant species until human-caused climate change—in the form of rising sea levels and increasing inundations of sea water on the low-lying island—wiped it off the planet. But, while the extinction has been reported widely, articles have missed an important point: the scientists who...

The Council Against Inhumanity to Rodents (CAIR) today announced that even though not all of the millions of Rodents on Earth are Rats, and even though not all Rats are rabid, all rats are being mercilessly disparaged due to the un-Rat actions of a few. Ratophobia must cease!(Please see also, USA Today: U.S. cities face anti-Muslim backlash and Obama Praises “Enormous” Muslim Contributions to Our Country.) Sadly, there was recently a deplorable incident in which a poor, disenfranchised Muslim woman was bitten by a rat. While hard at work in the kitchen preparing the evening meal for her beloved husband, an Islamophobic Rat...

How big ARE New York's rats? Researcher catches one-and-a-half pound rodent three times the size of a normal beast "...'I've caught rats all over the city, and I've seen the ones that I didn't catch. I think it's among the biggest that live in New York City,' said Matt Combs of Fordham University. [snip] One of the largest rats ever reported in New York City was a huge beast dubbed Master Splinter by the Twitter user that first posted a picture of it. The enormous rat was found in a Footlocker store in the Bronx in 2012, according to Twitter...

When New Yorkers see something scurrying, they say something and that has brought rat complaints to the city's 311 hotline to a recent high of more than 24,000 so far this year, officials said on Thursday. 'The rats are taking over,' New York City comptroller Scott Stringer told Reuters. 'I'm a lifelong New Yorker and I've never seen it this bad... I see them on my way home, they're standing upright, they say, "Good morning, Mr Comptroller."' With more than two months of grumbling still left in 2015, rodent-related grievances were already at 24,375 as of Wednesday, said Mayor Bill...

Scientists say the rat is part of an "amazing group of rodents" only found in a remote part of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia.A new species of rat has been discovered on an island in Indonesia. The previously unknown hog-nosed shrew rat (Hyorhinomys stuempkei) was found in a remote and mountainous region of Sulawesi Island located about two days' hike from the closest village. Scientists consider the rat so exceptional that they have described it not only as a new species but a new genus - a step up from the "new species" label. The rat was discovered by an international...

Medical researchers are growing human organs in mice by implanting dead human baby organs into rodents, a practice that stands to gain greater scrutiny in light of undercover videos exposing what appears to be Planned Parenthood affiliates selling aborted baby parts to medical procurement companies like StemExpress.

A rare and elusive rabbit has been found, held and photographed by a researcher from the University of East Anglia (UEA). The Annamite Striped rabbit, found in the forests of Laos and Vietnam, was first documented by rabbit expert Dr Diana Bell and colleagues from UEA’s School of Biological Sciences in the journal Nature in 1999. It has rarely been seen since. Researcher Sarah Woodfin, who is studying for a Masters in Applied Ecology and Conservation at UEA, set out on a three-month expedition to track the recently-discovered rabbit and study its habitat. But she didn’t expect to see one...

It has happened yet again. President Barack Obama has been plagued by flying insects, and this time they interrupted the commander in chief as he was reading to children Monday morning at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. As the president was reciting lines from the famous book “Where the Wild Things Are,” bees began buzzing around the kids seated on the South Lawn at the White House. “Oh no, it’s a bee!” declared Obama when some children began to scream because of the insects. “It’s OK, guys.” Obama tried to assure the children everything would be fine, saying,...

Zoo Won’t Let de Blasio Hold Groundhog After He Killed One Last Year The NYPD isn't the only city organization that has lost complete confidence in the esteemed Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. After he dropped the groundhog during last year's Groundhog Day celebrations, the Staten Island Zoo has unequivocally banned De Blasio from holding or handling any more of their animals in a celebratory setting. - Mayor de Blasio won’t be killing any more groundhogs — zoo handlers are forbidding the butter-fingered mayor from holding the critter at the annual shadow-sighting ceremony on Feb. 2, The...

The recent news that a Colorado man was diagnosed with the plague may have left some wondering: Does that still happen here?The answer, somewhat surprisingly, is yes.While the last plague epidemic in the United States was back in 1924, when 37 people died in Los Angeles, the much-feared disease still surfaces in humans from time to time, though it's very infrequent — and fully treatable with antibiotics if it's caught in time."Plague... spread from urban rats to rural rodent species, and became entrenched in many areas of the western United States," the CDC explains. "Since that time, plague has...

RICHMOND, VA - The Richmond Flying Squirrels, Double-A affiliate of the 2012 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants, have announced their plans for Salute to Scandal Night on Thursday, August 1st. Headlining the night will be $1 hot dogs available at all of the Flying Squirrels concession stands. Related Content Promo Preview "Scandal night is meant to be a fun, tongue in cheek night and what hotter of a scandal right now than Anthony Weiner," said Flying Squirrels Vice President and COO Todd "Parney" Parnell. "His scandal just couldn't have come at a better time in regards to the Flying...

Epigenetic changes affect neurotransmitters that lead to pair-bond formation. Love really does change your brain — at least, if you’re a prairie vole. Researchers have shown for the first time that the act of mating induces permanent chemical modifications in the chromosomes, affecting the expression of genes that regulate sexual and monogamous behaviour. The study is published today in Nature Neuroscience1. Prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) have long been of interest to neuroscientists and endocrinologists who study the social behaviour of animals, in part because this species forms monogamous pair bonds — essentially mating for life. The voles' pair bonding, sharing...

X-rays may not heal broken bones, but low doses of ionizing radiation may spark other health benefits, a new study of mice suggests. Radiation in high doses has well-known harmful effects. Scientists had thought low doses would do less extensive damage but could add up to big problems later. But radiation acts differently at low doses, producing health benefits for mice with an unusual genetic makeup, Randy Jirtle of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and colleagues report online November 1 in the FASEB Journal. Antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamins C and E, erased those health gains. “What goes on at high...

Enlarge Image Young at heart. Cross-sections of mouse ventricles show the visible change in size when old hearts are immersed in young blood. Credit: Francesco Loffredo It's time to turn back the clock on an aging ticker. Drawing on an odd experimental technique invented more than a century ago but rarely done now, researchers have found that a blood-borne protein makes old mouse hearts appear young and healthy again. It's not clear yet whether humans would react the same way, but scientists are hopeful that this discovery may help treat one of the heart's most frustrating ailments. "This is probably...