We’re not sure if anyone needed a reason to not touch a monkey they come across in the wild, but Floridians just got one — because they can give you herpes.
If you see a monkey in Florida, don’t touch it. It seems like pretty basic advice, especially now that scientists have found that more than a quarter of these adorable, feral invaders carry the deadly herpes B virus.
Though at least 25 percent of the population carries the virus — which causes mild disease in macaques, but can be deadly to humans — fewer were actually infectious. The virus lies dormant in nerves in between flare-ups, similar to cold sores in humans. Between 4 and 14 percent of the monkeys released the virus in their spit during their fall breeding season, researchers report in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. And the wild monkeys’ poop turned out to be pristine — at least, as far as herpes B was concerned.
“The headlines have already taken off about this, but there’s really a lot we still don’t know about herpes B in wild monkeys,” says study author Samantha Wisely, a wildlife biologist at the University of Florida. The virus is what she calls low-risk, but high-consequence — like rabies, she says. “There’s really a low risk of you getting it, but if you get it, there are going to be very high consequences.”
