While most of the planet faces a battle with a new infectious disease outbreak, the cougars in Yellowstone face a much older pathogenic enemy: the plague.
After noticing that the cougars were dying under mysterious circumstances during the winter of 2006, researchers examined 28 cougars from the Yellowstone area, looking for traces of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria responsible for the bubonic plague that swept through Europe in the 14th century. . Their results, published in the journal Enviromental Conservation in March, found that nearly half had been exposed to the plague between 2005 and 2014.
The disease may be even more common in cougars than these results suggest. But we don't have to worry: the infection does not pose a significant threat to humans.
Despite the fact that this bacterium killed around 100 million people during the so-called Black Death (1347-1353), it is now easily treated with antibiotics.
Reference: Plague, pumas and potential zoonotic exposure in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. L Mark Elbroch (a1), T Winston Vickers (a2) and Howard B Quigley (a1) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892920000065 Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2020
