An international study has discovered that fire-footed rope squirrels, which are increasingly hunted and consumed by humans, likely carry the monkeypox virus without getting sick.
Monkeypox can lead to severe disease in humans, and it regularly spills over from wildlife (zoonotic diseases). Recent large global outbreaks with sustained human-to-human transmission have raised special concern.
A long-term surveillance study led by the Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH), Germany, documented a monkeypox outbreak in 2023 among a group of 80 monkeys, wild sooty mangabeys, in Ivory Coast, which spread to one-third of the group and killed four infants.
Mangabeys mostly eat fruits, seeds and nuts, and occasionally prey on small rodents, including squirrels. Researchers discovered the mpox virus in a mangabey in December 2022, with evidence suggesting it was transmitted from a squirrel, including sightings of mangabeys eating squirrels, the presence of squirrel DNA in the mangabey faeces and the presence of an identical mpox virus on a dead squirrel.
“Identifying the animal sources of the virus and the exposure routes that lead to inter-species transmission are key steps towards understanding spillover mechanisms and developing effective prevention measures to mitigate the risk of transmission to humans,” says Livia V. Patrono, from HIOH and senior author of the article published in Nature.
