What animals can carry Lyme disease?

What animals get Lyme disease? Dogs, horses and sometimes cattle can get Lyme disease. White-tailed deer, mice, chipmunks, gray squirrels, opossums and raccoons can also be infected.

Can pets carry Lyme disease?

Can I Catch Lyme Disease From my Dog? Dogs are not a direct source of infection for people. Lyme disease can’t be transmitted from one pet to another, nor from pets to humans, except through tick bites.

What happens if the bunny gets a tick?

Ticks carry diseases that can be fatal to rabbits. The longer a tick feeds on a rabbit, the more your pet’s health is jeopardized. If they eat their fill and drop off, they won’t die. This means they can lay eggs, and cause an infestation.

How do I know if my pet has Lyme disease?

Many animals can have Lyme disease and show no signs. In dogs, the most common signs include fever, loss of appetite, painful or swollen joints, lameness that comes and goes, swollen lymph nodes, and lethargy. If Lyme disease is left untreated it can lead to damage in the kidneys, nervous system, and heart.

Can rabbits spread ticks?

Since ticks can be found on 49 bird species, all mammals including chipmunks, squirrel, voles, foxes, rabbits and mice, when deer numbers are reduced, ticks tend to congregate in higher densities on the remaining deer or switch to find alternate hosts, like you, your children, or your pets.

Can birds get Lyme disease?

Birds as Lyme disease reservoirs burgdorferi or related spirochetes. Among the 23 species of birds that were infected, the study authors highlighted the lesser goldfinch, oak titmouse and dark-eyed junco as birds that harbored more subtypes of Lyme disease bacteria than others.

What does Lyme look like?

At first you may feel like you have the flu — fever, chills, a headache, and joint or muscle pain. You also may notice a skin rash that starts near the tick bite anywhere from 3 to 30 days later. As the rash gets bigger, the middle often clears and a red ring shows up around the outside, leaving a “bull’s-eye” look.

Do rabbits carry Lyme ticks?

We conclude that rabbits perpetuate the agent of Lyme disease in an enzootic cycle where rabbit-feeding Ixodes are abundant, that intensity of transmission is independent of the zoonotic cycle in mice, but that infection may occasionally be exchanged between these cycles.

Can rabbits get Lyme disease from ticks?

Ticks can be hosts to many different infectious diseases including Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

What kind of ticks do rabbits carry?

It is a three-host tick and a member of the family Ixodidae, commonly called the “hard ticks,” and the genus Haemaphysalis. Its common hosts are rabbits (such as Sylvilagus spp.), hares (Lepus spp.), and sometimes ground-feeding birds.