Negosentro.com | What diseases do coyotes carry and what are some symptoms of a sick coyote? | One of the biggest concerns with coyotes is the threat of disease, and the scariest of those is generally rabies for many people. Not just a disease that can be passed on to other animals, including your household cats and dogs, rabies is a disease that can kill humans, and what makes it all the more dangerous still, is the fact that it can sit dormant, without any symptoms, for a while.
If household pets are not vaccinated, they could easily become infected with the virus, which then puts the entire rest of your home in grave danger. This is an even scarier prospect if you have kids. The virus actually doesn’t need much to ‘jump’ from one host to another either, used on by infected biological matter, such as a non-infected animal eating the carcass of an infected animal, by way of a scratch, if the animal has licked its claws and then scratched you, or by way of a bite, through saliva, once again.
The earliest symptoms of rabies in humans will look like the flu — sniffles, aching bones and muscles, a slight temperature, perhaps a headache. These symptoms would not have you rushing to the doctor, however, and it is normally only after a few more days, when the symptoms do not ease up, that you find yourself making an appointment with the doctor. Again, we would like to remind you that treatment for rabies MUST be administered BEFORE symptoms show.
These flu-like symptoms will not easily be seen in wild animals. How would you know if a coyote had a headache? Or aching bones? You wouldn’t, and that’s the most important thing to remember with ANY wild animal — you just don’t know.
With coyotes, even if rabies weren’t a concern, there are other common diseases regularly carried and transmitted. Heartworm is a big problem if you have pets of your own, the tapeworm, Echinococcus Granulosus, can be passed to both humans and other animals, causing Hydatid Disease. This disease can be especially dangerous, because it can taken one or two DECADES to show symptoms. Tularemia is another dangerous disease that you can add to the list, as well as Equine Encephalitis. In short, coyotes can carry a wide range of diseases, some of which won’t even have obvious symptoms. You should treat every coyote as a sick or infected one, until you know otherwise. There are certain wild animals that you can quite easily get rid of in a DIY fashion, but this one is not one of them.
