Most people assume, often incorrectly, that hair loss in squirrels is the result of mange, a disease caused by microscopic mites that burrow into the skin and are unseen by the naked eye. Hair loss ...

Leprosy—officially Hansen’s disease—is a highly contagious ... customs accounts reported some 15,000 animal skin imports that weren’t squirrels. Meanwhile, 377,200 squirrel skins were ...

The disease can result in skin lesions, nerve damage ... Later on, chimpanzees in West Africa and modern red squirrels in Britain were found to have been infected as well. Now, researchers ...