Flying Squirels Push Range 140 Miles N. In MI; Armadillos "Never Expected" This Far North

[hatrack]

EDIT

But there's no question armadillos - and other small mammals - are on the move in the United States, expanding into terrain biologists thought highly unlikely just a few years ago.

Some of that migration can be attributed to opportunity: The armadillo in particular has been moving northward since it arrived in Texas in the 1880s and Florida in the 1920s, according to Colleen McDonough, a biology professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia.

Some, however, is clearly triggered by a changing climate. Armadillos have settled into southern Illinois, Indiana, Kansas and Missouri - all areas that were "totally unexpected," McDonough said.

They're not the only ones. White-footed mice and southern flying squirrels have expanded their range northward some 140 miles in Michigan, according to University of Michigan biology professor Philip Myers, who described the migration in a recent paper as "an unusually clear example of change that is likely to be the result of climatic warming."

EDIT

http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2011/06/armadillo-moves-north

[XemaSab]

1. .

[phantom power]

2. More Northern Than Expected!

[damntexdem]

3. But there has been a flying squirrel in Frostbite Falls, MN, for decades.

Living with a moose.

;-)

[mysuzuki2]

4. Rocky is a Northern Flying squirrel!

the moose, I don't know.

[Mojorabbit]

5. I don't know how they survive the winter

armadillos don't hibernate and they have a primitive thermoregulation system. I do wildlife rehab and am raising two youngsters now. Here is a little girl ready for release having a bath. They love water and do barrel rolls in it. I recorded this at the end of a long bath.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SImQO8SaZ3E

[NickB79]

6. Possibly finding shelter in human structures

Hiding in barns, sheds, garages, anywhere there's enough heat to keep them warm and trash to sift through for food?

[TygrBright]

7. Just in time. I understand they're tasty. With everyone out of work and losing unemployment...

...another free protein source will be welcome, I'm sure.

dourly,
Bright

[MountainLaurel]

8. Unfortunately

Armadillos are carriers of Hansen's disease (aka, leprosy): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/health/28leprosy.html

[Nihil]

9. So are humans ...

... and armadillos don't have anything like as many other downsides ...

:shrug:

[dbackjon]

10. They first got it from humans

From above article

Armadillos Can Transmit Leprosy to Humans, Federal Researchers ConfirmBy GARDINER HARRIS
Published: April 27, 2011
Recommend
Twitter
comments (37)
Sign In to E-Mail

Print


Reprints

Share
Close
LinkedinDiggMySpacePermalink. Armadillos have never been among the cuddly creatures routinely included in petting zoos, but on Wednesday federal researchers offered a compelling reason to avoid contact with the armored animals altogether: They are a source of leprosy infections in humans.

Enlarge This Image

Julio Viard
Few armadillos live long enough in the wild to be seriously affected by the infection.
Related
Health Guide: LeprosyReaders' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Read All Comments (37) »
Using genetic sequencing machines, researchers were able to confirm that about a third of the leprosy cases that arise each year in the United States almost certainly result from contact with infected armadillos. The cases are concentrated in Louisiana and Texas, where some people hunt, skin and eat armadillos.

Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is an ancient scourge that has largely disappeared, but each year about 150 to 250 people in the United States and 250,000 in the world contract the illness. As long as the disease is identified relatively quickly, treatment with antibiotics — a one- to two-year regimen with three different drugs — offers an effective cure. But every year dozens of people in the United States do not recognize their skin lesions for what they are early enough and suffer lifelong nerve damage as a result.

Part of the problem is that doctors sometimes fail to consider leprosy in patients who have not traveled to parts of the world where the disease is endemic, like India, Brazil, Africa, the Philippines and other islands in the Western Pacific. Two-thirds of leprosy patients in the United States are people who have either lived or worked in such places before coming down with the illness.

But in a given year, about 50 to 80 people who have symptoms consistent with leprosy tell their doctors that they have not traveled to such areas or had any contact with someone with a leprosy infection. And in these patients, doctors may mistakenly dismiss consideration of a leprosy infection.

“These patients have always been a puzzle,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Now researchers are hoping that their study leads doctors to ask one more question of patients who have skin lesions that are numb in the center: Any armadillos in your life?

Leprosy now joins a host of other infectious diseases — including flu, H.I.V./AIDS and SARS — that are known to have jumped from animals to humans. Flu is thought to have first crossed to humans from migratory waterfowl several hundred years ago. H.I.V./AIDS first crossed from a chimpanzee about 90 years ago.

Dr. Fauci said that about 70 percent of new emerging infectious diseases were known to have animal origins.

But one of the interesting aspects of leprosy is that transmission seems to have gone in both directions. Leprosy was not present in the New World before Christopher Columbus, and armadillos are indigenous only to the New World.

“So armadillos had to have acquired it from humans sometime in the last 400 to 500 years,” said Dr. Richard W. Truman, a researcher at the National Hansen’s Disease Program in Baton Rouge, La., and an author of the armadillo study, which was published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.