Few three letter word combinations elect terror like ‘Mad Snake Disease’ (possible exceptions include ‘Aggressive Bed Spiders’ and ‘Conditions May Apply’).
Fortunately for us humans the disease is not of the ’28 Days Later’ style (especially considering the recent ‘giant python incident in Florida’). Unfortunately for the snakes this disease can have fatal consequences.
The disease, called Inclusion Body Disease (IBD), can cause captive boas and pythons to tie themselves in knots along with other strange behaviour, such as ‘stargazing’ where the snake stares at the sky for long periods of time.
Captive snakes like this python are particularly susceptible to IBD.
IBD gets its name from the pockets of foreign material found in the cells of infected animals. While highly contagious, its cause has remained unknown until recently.
A team led by Professor Buchmier discovered the cause of IBD during their investigation of an outbreak at the Stienhart Aquarium in San Francisco, California. Tests showed that the disease was a new type of arenavirus, a type of virus which usually only effects mammals, particularly rodents. The team has published their findings in mBio, the online journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
Arenaviruses have been known to transfer from rodents to humans, causing haemorrhagic fever (a type of disease classification Ebola belongs to). But so far there have been no examples of this type of virus transferring from snakes to humans.
Yet.
Image sourced at: http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-2433637348
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