Even more interesting is the epidemic of FELV, the feline leukaemia which affected 17% of street cats in Rome.
Thanks to the nice “gattare” [2], felines don’t depend on the famine factor for their survival any longer, while predation, as it is for other domestic or semidomestic animals, ceased acting long ago. This doesn’t prevent the disease factor, in this case the vius of feline Leukaemia, from regulating population.
Then it’s important to notice that H.I.V. is present in the colonies of street cats in Rome.
The H.I.V. of cats or F.I.V. (Feline Immunodeficency Virus) is transmitted through sexual contacts, saliva and blood cats exchange vith scratches and bites.
Where a great concentration of felines exists, fights for the territory are very frequent.
One of the mechanisms, through which F.I.V. makes its own transmission to new hosts easier, is causing organic alterations in the brains of cats which increase their aggressiveness.
Let’s conclude this study about animal world by observing, once again, how human action can interfere in the mechanisms regulating the population of a certain species and how this can damage man himself.
The number of rats of a determinate community has been said to increase up to a certain point, beyond which some kind of epizootic, which reduces their number down to figures even inferior to the ones of the beginnig, breaks out.
Obviously there are many species of rats. Among them Rattus Norvegicus (brown), Rattus Rattus (the nasty black mouse) and Mus Musculus are the most organized ones in their family. Human initiative, during past centuries, has altered natural balance in favour of these three species. This happened because human beings have, indirectly, protcted them from their enemies by offering plentiful food with garbage and taking them around the world (another synonim for Rattus Rattus, besides black mouse, is Ship Rat). So Norvegicus spreads anywhere there is some food left by human beings.
Rattus Rattus can climb very well and lives on the top floors and roofs of the buildings the basements and sewers of which are accupied by Norvegicus.
Always for its skill in climbing Rattus Rattus gets on ships along the ropes [2] and spreads all over the world [3].
Finally Mus Musculus is ths smallest of all and can enter where the others cannot.
Habitual parasites of rats are fleas and they are responsible of the spreading of plague, one of the commonest Epizootic of these rodents.
The innatural increasing of the population of rats causes also an exceptional increasing of fleas, their parasites. When rats die the so many fleas can’t do but move to man, bringing Pasteurella Pestis [4].
Epizootic (an infectious disease of animal world) turns, this way, into epidemic [5] (an infectious disease of man).
A mechanism of numerical regulation in animal world, present the bacterium and its vectors, fleas, transfers to man because he doesn’t recognize or disregards the importance of the laws of nature.
[1] Those women who take care of street cats are called like that.
[3] Pollitzer R, Meyer K F, The Ecology of Plague. in Studies in Disease Ecology. Pgg. 445-8 Edited by May J M Hafner Publishing CompanyInc. New York 1961.
[4] Ibidem pag.463-4
[5] Ibidem pag.477
Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci
See also :
1°)Mechanism at negative retroaction or genetic feedback 1/4
2°)Mechanism at negative retroaction or genetic feedback 2/4
3°)Mechanism at negative retroaction or genetic feedback 3/4
Ferdinando Gargiulo offers you a new perspective on why new viral epidemics, assaults, infanticides, suicide epidemics and even environmental catastrophes. Always engaged in his research decides to create a blog to offer his readers content of high value.