Wild brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) from 11 rural UK farmsteads were found to carry 13 zoonotic and 10 non-zoonotic parasitic species, many of which (e.g. Cryptosporidium, Pasteurella, Listeria, Yersinia, Coxiella and Hantavirus) have rarely or never been previously investigated for wild rats. The study suggests that wild brown rats, serving as vectors of disease, represent a serious risk to the health of humans and domestic animals in the UK.
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Webster et al. (1995) studied this question.
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