Stan,
A few other animals can carry Leprosy. From Wiki:
Naturally occurring infections have been reported in nonhuman primates (including the African chimpanzee, the sooty mangabey, and the cynomolgus macaque), armadillos,[36] and red squirrels.[37] Multilocus sequence typing of the armadillo M. leprae strains suggests that they were of human origin for at most a few hundred years.[38] Thus, it is suspected that armadillos first acquired the organism incidentally from early European explorers of the Americas.[39] This incidental transmission was sustained in the armadillo population. It may be transmitted back to humans, making leprosy a zoonotic disease (spread between humans and animals).[39]
Red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris), a threatened species in Great Britain, were found to carry leprosy in November 2016.[40] It has been suggested that the trade in red squirrel fur, highly prized in the medieval period and intensively traded, may have been responsible for the leprosy epidemic in medieval Europe.[41] A pre-Norman era skull excavated in Hoxne, Suffolk, in 2017 was found to carry DNA from a strain of M. leprae which closely matched the strain carried by modern red squirrels on Brownsea Island.
They didn’t figure out Red Squirrels were a carrier until 2016.
I was never tempted to eat red squirrels (we had a member here who did) but, ate plenty of grays back in the day. The red squirrels in Europe are a different species than the little pests that are troubling Tim. Same MO, however.
I think the polite term for leprosy is Hanson’s disease.
Best,
Ted
