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Plague carrying rodents
Harry has described squirrels as "Plague or Disease carrying rodents" on many occasions. These photos from my back yard may tend to support that opinion...... :dunno
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Florida Wildlife & Nature Photography
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Good shots..................
Your property value just went down 60%
http://behret.smugmug.com/ NANPA member
How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
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The first and last squirrels are infected with the "bot fly". The bot fly lays it eggs inside of the squirrel, and they develope into rather large larvae. The squrrel trys to sratch/ chew them out, causing open, nasty sores. So actually, those two squirrels are not "disease carrying", but instead are being eaten alive by the bot fly!
The middle two squirrels look to have "fibromatosis". They were born with the disorder that causes the tumors, very common in squirrels, but again not a disease, and actually most of the time it is harmless to the squirrel, unlike the bot fly.
So the middle two, they are just "special", but first and last, they are in some serious hurt!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibromatosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botfly
I think your observations is correct, but fibromatosis is caused by a virus, and the Tree Squirrel Bot Fly unlike other bot flys lay their eggs on tree branches and the hatched larva transfer to the squirrels when the rodent brushes up to them on the trees.
Upon closer observation of these photographs, I think that these two squirrels are infected by two different aliments.
In photos #1 and #4, it appears that squirrel has a heavy infection of Bot Fly larva, which are transmitted to the squirrel by coming in contact with the larva on tree branches after the tree squirrel bot fly Cuterebra emasculator had deposited her eggs on the branch.
On the other hand, photos #2 and #3 appear to be a virus infection of squirrel fibroma or squirrelpox, which is probably transmitted to the squirrel by mosquitoes.
See the University of Florida discussion Squirrel fibromatosis:
Comparisons & contrasts with bot fly infestation at http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/slansky/botfly/fibroma/fibrintr.htm
The University of Florida is also working on a page about the Bot Fly at http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/slansky/botfly/index.htm
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Florida Wildlife & Nature Photography
Interesting, I can say I learned something new today.
Most of my knowledge is of human disorders/diseases, so I think when I learned about the fibromatosis, I thought of it like the human variety that is genetic (like the squarral equivalant to something like neurofibromatosis)
I found this (pdf) that has information that is relavent to Florida
http://www.jwildlifedis.org/cgi/reprint/38/2/305.pdf
Dude.
24-105mm