In many cities, pigeons—to take one urban animal—are reviled as flying vermin. They whitewash ledges and pick at filthy crumbs in the gutter. And, yes, these, dubbed by some as "rats with wings," do carry diseases that humans can catch. But so do innumerable wild creatures outside city limits, the animals we eat—even our beloved pets.

Pigeons are guilty of transmitting fungal and bacterial diseases, primarily via their droppings, which pose the greatest risk to those with weakened immune systems. But cast against the recent spread of infectious zoonotic diseases—such as H5N1 bird flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—experts question the degree of concern over the disease-bearing potential of the birds that have colonized cities the world over.

In principle, any animal can carry a disease that humans could catch. But Marm Kilpatrick, an ecologist at the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York City, which studies human-induced environmental change, species health and biodiversity, wrote in an e-mail: "In reality, the vast majority [about 99.999 percent] of pathogens that are carried by animals won't infect people."

Even so, zoonotic diseases represent a growing proportion of emerging infectious diseases; two British studies calculated that about 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic. (By comparison, about 60 percent of all human pathogens can infect animals.)

Real rats (the ground-hugging kind) aren't innocent by any means: Research links them with the reemergence of bubonic plague and typhus. But bats (of whom "winged rats" is more apropos) may be giving the unpopular rodents a run for their infamous reputation. Long associated with rabies, bats gained new notoriety in the 1990s after outbreaks of the Hendra and Nipah viruses killed both humans and livestock in Australia and Southeast Asia, respectively. A few years later SARS terrified the world by taking flight on commercial airlines. The virus left a trail leading back to the live animal markets in China, first to civet cats and subsequently to bats, the latter vector now believed to be the true starting point for the virus.

And, despite increasing urbanization throughout the world, people and wildlife are sharing more infections. In the Hendra and Nipah outbreaks, habitat fragmentation and increased contact between wild bats and domestic animals have been implicated. Bushmeat, particularly that of our close cousins the chimpanzee, has caused Ebola outbreaks in Africa.

In the U.S., prairie dog owners caught monkey pox from their pets. And the reforestation of Northeastern states over the past century has allowed deer populations to boom, spreading Lyme disease.

By comparison, pigeons' potential for spreading bird flu seems rather minimal. So far most of nearly 220 human deaths caused by the pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu have been traced to contact with poultry. And the strain has yet to arrive in North America. If a similar one were to emerge here, the result could be disastrous for industrial farm workers before anyone else, according to Gregory Gray, director of the University of Iowa's Center for Emerging Diseases.

"Exposure to domestic birds has changed markedly," he says. In the nation's confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—the industrial operations that have replaced family farms with at minimum 9,000-chicken or 750–large pig facilities—agricultural workers spend much more time in close contact with animals than a farmer would have 50 years ago.

These are potentially the mixing pots for the next flu pandemic, Gray argues. When an outbreak occurs undetected in a facility, viruses can mutate as they cycle through large flocks or herds. Gray and his colleagues have shown farmers, veterinarians and meat processors all had high swine influenza infection rates, and avian veterinarians carry more bird flu.

3 Comments

1. 1. Go Yoshida 07:25 PM 3/24/08

   Pigeons are not as responsible for transmittion of infectious diseases as we thought.
   Even so, Aspergillus and other agents are dangerous for immune-compromised hosts.
   That is one of the reasons why it is essentially important to avoid feeding pigeons near a hospital.

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2. 2. OldGrampa 04:00 PM 9/17/08

   Seems to me that we are our worst vectors.

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3. 3. pcwalker 06:05 PM 9/22/08

   Humans over the last _100-150 years have become hysterical about
   hygiene. The truth is that we live in a world dominated by microbes
   most of which are not pathogenic. This obsession about diseases
   carried by other animal species is just another variation on this nonsensical theme. In fact, most of the epidemic diseases that are real threats to humans are carried and spread by humans and can be supressed and controlled by appropriate vaccination programs.

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