Rabbit died a very strange way

Are we looking at another attack of biological warfare?

The other day one of my pups alerted me to a small cotton tail rabbit outside of the fence, it was thrashing around and in agony. It acted as though it couldn’t breath.

As there was nothing we could do, we left if Alone, I checked on it not but a half an hour later and had passed away.

It was heart breaking to see this poor little animal suffer from a man made bacteria!

Tularemia is a bacterial disease of humans, wild, and domestic animals. Francisella tularensis, which is a Gram-negative coccobacillus-shaped bacterium, is the causative agent of tularemia. Recently, an increase in the number of human tularemia cases has been noticed in several countries around the world. It has been reported mostly from North America, several Scandinavian countries, and certain Asian countries. The disease spreads through vectors such as mosquitoes, horseflies, deer flies, and ticks. Humans can acquire the disease through direct contact of sick animals, consumption of infected animals, drinking or direct contact of contaminated water, and inhalation of bacteria-loaded aerosols. Low infectious dose, aerosol route of infection, and its ability to induce fatal disease make it a potential agent of biological warfare. 

Francisella tularensis is a pleomorphic, Gram-negative, non-motile, and non-spore-forming intracellular bacterium. It was isolated for the first time in Tulare county of California in 1911. Tularemia is also known as Pahvant Valley plague, rabbit fever, deer fly fever, and Ohara’s fever. The causative organism of tularemia has been isolated from man and a wide range of animal species including mammals, birds, fishes, amphibians, arthropods, and protozoa. It is also revealed that isolation of this bacterium may represent colonization without infection as the presence of the organism has been reported from animals without any disease symptoms. F. tularensis is taxonomically divided into several sub-species, including tularensis (also known as type A), holarctica (also known as type B), mediaasiatica, and novicida. Cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus spp.) and ticks are the main reservoirs of type A (Telford and Goethert 2020).

Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7521936/

It is time to pay attention!

WWYHS