Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is better known as mad cow disease. It is a very serious neurological disorder that ends up causing the death of the patient. But squirrels are not the only ones that transmit it.
The publication Live Science includes the case of a 51-year-old patient in Rochester, New York, who died shortly after being admitted to the hospital. The man had lost the mobility and also the contact with the reality. He was dizzy and his mental faculties were seriously damaged.
Doctors diagnosed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a neurological disorder produced by proteins called prions. And when they set out to find out what the source of the infection was, they discovered that the patient was a hunter, and had a habit of eating frequently the brains of squirrels that he hunted himself.
It is not the first time that it is documented how these animals can spread the disease. In 1997, the publication The Lancet echoed the case of two women from a rural area of Kentucky who were also infected with prions because of the brains of squirrels
