There may be a lot of rabbits in your area, which may make you worry about how they might affect your health and safety. After all, if rats and mice in the wild are known to spread disease, then maybe rabbits are too.
The number of wild Rabbits is not a threat to public health, and they are not dangerous to people. But they can spread a disease called tularemia if you touch a sick rabbit or eat meat that isn’t fully cooked. Through their pee and feces, rabbits do not give people diseases.
Still, tularemia is a pretty uncommon disease. In the US alone, there are only about 200 cases each year. For the most part, these cases are not even caused by rabbits. Instead, ticks, flies, and mice spread them. You probably won’t get the disease if you stay away from wild rabbits and teach your kids to do the same. This is true even if you live in an area where rabbits are common.
Are rabbits in the wild dangerous to people?
They can be very bad for your yard, but not for people. Rabbits don’t carry many diseases that can be passed from animals to people like mice do. There is a very small chance that having a lot of wild rabbits in your backyard will make you or your kids sick.
That being said, it’s not a common disease; in fact, there are only about 300 cases in the whole USA every year. If you don’t work with sick or dead wild rabbits, a lot of them in your neighborhood probably won’t get you sick.
If My Dog Catches a Rabbit, Could They Get Tularemia?
If your dog catches a bunny, it can also get tularemia. You might want to keep your dog on a leash in places with lots of rabbits if they are naturally good at hunting them. This is especially important in places like Arkansas and Missouri where tularemia is popular.
But even though dogs can get tularemia from wild rabbits, it probably won’t get really sick in them. The truth is that most dogs that get the sickness will not show any signs at all. But very young dogs or dogs that already have health problems can get some symptoms that are sometimes very bad. If your dog is showing any signs of illness after being around a rabbit, you should call your vet right away.
People can get tularemia from a dog that gets it from a rabbit, but this also doesn’t happen very often. It can only be passed on through bites and scratches that break the skin, which is why most dogs are good and won’t give the disease to their owners.
Trubellemia, also known as rabbit fever, is the only disease that rabbits can really give to people. To get it, you would have to touch a dead or dying rabbit.
Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma are some of the middle southern states where tularemia is most common. However, cases have been reported in every US state except Hawaii. A lot of people also get the disease more often in the summer.
Could you touch a wild rabbit?
If you can help it, don’t touch wild rabbits. If you touch a sick animal, you could get tularemia. It’s best not to touch rabbits because they can get the disease.
You won’t touch a wild rabbit by chance, which is good news. If there are a lot of wild rabbits in your area, you probably won’t ever touch one. This is because most rabbits, even sick rabbits, will run away before anyone gets within 10 feet of them. A lot of people who handle dead rabbits or are shooters are more likely to get tularemia.
Wild rabbit poop or pee can make you sick.
When compared to many other wild animals, bunnies are pretty clean. No illnesses are known to be spread to people by their poop or urine. This also means that if your dog finds rabbit poop in the yard, it’s fine, because it doesn’t make dogs sick.
Is rabbit poop bad for your grass?
There may be rabbit poop on your lawn from time to time if there are a lot of them in the area. Not what you might think, but this is good for the plants and the land. There are a lot of minor nutrients in rabbit poop that help plants grow. It feeds plants naturally.
It’s fine to find rabbit poop around food plants you want to eat because it doesn’t make people sick. However, that is only true if the rabbit didn’t enjoy eating in your yard. A rabbit attack might not be dangerous to people, but rabbits love to eat plants.
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