Dear Ferret Folks- I was reading and came across a description of Bovine TB, just days after our thread ended. Well. it was HORRIFYING. I went back and looked at the old posts from last week to see if I had anything to add. I do, but it is pretty awful. None of the old threads described what the disease does. The book I am reading does. I send the info out for those who are interested in such things. If you are squeamish, SCROLL NOW. This is a true story, a primatologists memoir of his time in Kenya. (A Primate's Memoir, by Robert M. Sapolsky 2001.) He lived near the traditional cattle herding people, the Masai, (in the 80's, 90's) and a number of "lodges", all inclusive hotels for foriegn tourists who wanted to buy wildlife viewing packages, owned and operated by foreign companies. Well, the primatoligist's favourite troop of baboons got sick, very sick. He darted some that were too weak to forage for themselves anymore, and were just hanging out near one particular lodge's garbage dump. These animals were emaciated, missing fur, and coughing, sometimes coughing up bloody foam. Some of them had hands that had died from gangrene, but were still attached. He conducted an autopsy. Inside, he found an abdominal cavity full of foul watery fluid. (I did warn you this was gross.) Adhering to all of the internal organs were shiny little hard black things that looked like watermelon seeds, hundreds of them. When he cut one open, he said it was "granular powdery, lighter colored." p.279) They were even in the spinal cord, and what was left of the lungs was full of them. I will not go into his description of the lungs, except to say that he used words like "milky", "oozing", and "melted." (p.279.) He completely freaked out, because this stuff splashed on him, and he had NO IDEA what it was. He brougt samples into Nairobi, where there were medical facilities. The disease agent was identified almost immediately as TB, because of the presence of the hundreds of tubercuoles, those little hard black watermelon seed-like things. The microbiology lab pegged it as Mycobacterium bovis, Bovine TB. Apparently, the local Masai had learned an evil little trick. They were very skilled at detecting the early signs of TB in their cattle. They would bribe a Kenyan meat inspector to pass the sick cow, and sell it to one of these lodges. The cooks would butcher it, cutting out the obviously infected parts full of tubercuoles. The infected stuff went into their dump, where the baboons would eat it. The nicer looking parts were cooked up and fed to the happy tourists. Cooking it made it safe, just disgusting. Ecotourism, anyone? Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML issue 4784]