Cute and dangerous "cute pets"

Author: Ju Yufeng, attending physician at Shanghai Tongji Hospital

Reviewer: Wang Tao, Chief Physician, Shanghai Tongji Hospital

Why did the “Cute Pet Park” emerge?

In recent years, with the rapid development of my country's economy, urbanization is taking place rapidly all over the country. By the end of 2022, my country's urbanization rate has reached a historic high of 65.22%, and the number of permanent urban residents is about 920.71 million.

Urbanization has greatly facilitated people's livelihood, but children growing up in cities rarely have the opportunity to get close to and come into contact with the colorful flora and fauna in nature. Due to space and environmental limitations, they rarely have the opportunity to see or come into contact with a variety of cute little animals other than domestic pets.

Against this special background, "Cute Pet Park" came into being and has become one of the most popular parent-child entertainment venues in major cities today.

Figure 1 Original copyright image, no permission to reprint

Various cute "pets" are kept in captivity or free-range in the park, allowing children and parents living in the city to observe, touch, and feed these cute little animals up close. While broadening their knowledge, they can also cultivate children's love, courage, observation, thinking, and athletic ability, and enhance parent-child relationships, which has many benefits.

What are the dangers of “cute pets”?

When we have close contact with these "cute pets", we may be infected with some diseases, which may endanger our health.

Let’s take a look at how these lovely “cute pets” spread diseases to us.

Fecal transmission

The cute "grass mud horse" - alpaca, can spread echinococcosis. Echinococcosis, also known as echinococcosis, is a disease caused by the larvae of the tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus infecting the human body. The disease is a zoonosis. Dogs are the final hosts, and sheep, cattle and alpacas are intermediate hosts. We humans come into contact with objects or food contaminated by alpaca feces containing worm eggs, and ingest them through the digestive tract to become intermediate hosts and contract echinococcosis. The most common clinical disease is hepatic echinococcosis, followed by pulmonary echinococcosis.

Figure 2 Original copyright image, no permission to reprint

When we play closely with cats and dogs, we may be infected with toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by the parasite Toxocara that lives in the intestines of cats and dogs. The eggs of Toxocara are in the intestines of cats and dogs and are excreted from the body with feces and spread to the outside world. When children come into contact with these contaminated soil, objects or toys, they ingest these eggs from the mouth into the gastrointestinal tract through unwashed hands. In the comfortable and nutritious environment of our gastrointestinal tract, the eggs of Toxocara slowly hatch into larvae and spread to other organs of our body, which is Toxoplasma infection.

In addition, brucellosis, salmonellosis and tuberculosis can be transmitted to humans through animal feces contaminating our food, drinking water, daily necessities or toys.

Blood transmission

Cat scratch disease may occur if you are accidentally scratched or bitten by a cat infected with Bartonella bacteria.

The most terrible thing is that being bitten or scratched by cats and dogs with rabies virus will cause terrible rabies. Rabies virus reproduces in the bodies of cats and dogs, and then spreads to our bodies through their saliva and contact with wounds on our bodies.

Airborne droplet transmission

When cute pets are sick, they will have runny noses and sneeze just like us humans. At this time, a large number of viruses will be transmitted to their own kind or to us humans through droplets and air, such as the well-known avian influenza and swine flu.

Close contact transmission

There are fleas, ticks, lice, scabies, tapeworms, etc. in the hair of cute pets. If we do not pay attention to personal protection and have excessive close contact with animals, such as hugging, kissing, eating at the same table, sleeping on the same bed, etc., it is easy to bring these parasites into our bodies and cause related zoonotic diseases.

How to treat the wound urgently after being bitten by a "cute pet"

There are interactive activities such as feeding and close contact in the "Cute Pet Park". Cute little animals, like us humans, have their own joys, sorrows, anger, and tempers. So they also have times when they are unhappy, sad, scared, and angry.

With the exception of professionals such as zoologists, keepers and veterinarians, most of us cannot interpret the language or behavior of these small animals, so we cannot correctly understand their thoughts or emotions.

If we come into close contact with them when they are angry or in a special period, accidents may happen and they may bite or scratch us aggressively.

Once you are injured by a small animal, do not treat the wound at will. Go to a designated medical institution immediately for regular treatment to avoid serious consequences.

If you are bitten or scratched by a cat or dog, don't panic, just follow the steps below:

Step 1: Immediately and thoroughly rinse the wound

Wash all bites and scratches with soapy water or detergent and pressurized running water alternately for at least 15 minutes.

If the wound is deep, open it as much as possible and flush the deep part of the wound with a syringe or high-pressure water for more than 30 minutes. While flushing, continuously squeeze the surrounding soft tissue to drain the dirty blood out of the body.

Timely and thorough flushing can wash away the rabies virus on the wound, greatly reducing the possibility of rabies virus entering human tissue and invading the central nervous system along the nerves. This is as important as rabies vaccination, but it is often ignored by many patients for various reasons, and the best time for flushing is missed.

Step 2: Use iodine (iodine tincture) or 75% medical alcohol and other disinfectants to disinfect the wound

Try to leave the wound open without stitching, bandaging or applying ointment, etc., to facilitate further discharge of contaminated blood and tissue fluid from the body.

If the blood vessels are injured and bleeding does not stop, they need to be sutured and adequately drained. If the conditions on site are limited, go to a local hospital as soon as possible to treat the wound.

Never imitate the scenes in movies and TV shows and use your mouth to suck out the dirty blood from the wound, because doing so can easily lead to infection with rabies virus through the oral mucosa.

Step 3: Get rabies vaccine as soon as possible

The best time to get the first vaccination is within 24 hours of being bitten, and it should be combined with a tetanus antitoxin injection.

If you are scratched or bitten by a cat or dog, you can consult the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention and go to a designated hospital to get a rabies vaccine. Even if it has been more than a day, you can still get a make-up vaccination because as long as the disease has not occurred before the vaccine takes effect, the vaccine can work.

If the bite wound is serious, anti-rabies serum should be injected. Because the antibody titer produced in the body can reach a protective level 10-14 days after vaccination, when there is no antibody to neutralize rabies virus in the body in the early stage, anti-viral serum should be injected to immediately neutralize the rabies virus around the wound, prevent it from spreading and invading the nervous system, and buy time for the body to actively produce antibodies after vaccination.

Figure 3 Original copyright image, no permission to reprint

Finally, I would like to remind everyone that due to the extremely high mortality rate of rabies, even if the bite or scratch wounds have not broken and bled, they should be cleaned and disinfected according to the above process and the rabies vaccine should be administered in time, because there are reports of rabies virus entering the human body through invisible skin and mucous membrane damage, causing rabies attacks.

Do bites from animals other than cats and dogs require rabies vaccination?

Currently, many rodents such as guinea pigs, hamsters, and rabbits are kept as pets. Rodents are generally classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as having a very low risk of rabies exposure.

It is generally believed that rodents and lagomorphs are not the natural hosts of rabies virus. Rabies vaccination is not necessary.

But it is clear that bat bites can cause rabies, so if you are bitten by a bat, you definitely need to get a rabies vaccine.

Birds, reptiles, fish and insects are not hosts of rabies virus and cannot transmit rabies virus, so there is no need to get rabies vaccine if bitten by turtles, lobsters, crabs, spiders, birds, etc.

After knowing the above dangers of "cute pets", we should pay attention to self-protection when interacting closely with "cute pets". Wear gloves and protective coats when feeding and touching. Wash your hands and face thoroughly immediately after contact before eating. Take a bath and wash the dirty clothes you have touched in time after returning home. In this way, we can enjoy the happy time with them and avoid the troubles and psychological shadows caused by accidental injuries or diseases.