Dreaded disease was spread by cute rodents

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People infect squirrels

For years we didn’t know that leprosy (also known as leprosy) could affect animals other than humans. Research in the 1980s found that armadillos in South America had been infected with it, but it was not until 2016 that the first squirrels with leprosy were found.

“The discovery of leprosy in modern squirrels was surprising and it’s incredible that we found the disease in the Middle Ages,” co-author Sarah Inskip, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester, told the BBC. “It really goes against the narrative that the disease only affected humans.”

In an article in the magazine Current Biology the archaeologists and genetic experts involved explain how they managed to establish a link between leprosy in the Middle Ages and contact with squirrels.

They examined human and red squirrel bones found over the years during excavations in and around the town of Winchester in southern England.