Scientists have uncovered a 4,000-year-old ancestor of the Black Death in the remains of a Bronze Age sheep, shedding light ...

Learn about our Editorial Policies. The rodents have long been blamed for spreading the plague, which is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Researchers thought the bacterium would infect fleas ...

Well, believe it or not, the plague is still around. Blame fleas and the rats, mice, chipmunks, and squirrels they infect. Bubonic plague is caused by bacteria that live in fleas. If you get bit ...

"It was remarkable to discover a domesticated sheep from the Bronze Age that was infected with LNBA plague. This gave us an ...

In 1897, Japanese physician Masanori Ogata wrote "one should pay attention to insects like fleas for, as the rat becomes cold after death, they leave their host and may transmit the plague virus ...

Rats and rat fleas in many foreign ports are at times infected with the plague, an extraordinarily ugly disease that occurs in several forms, of which the bubonic, the Black Death of the Middle ...

It is transmitted by fleas often carried by rodents in the wild, including rats and prairie dogs. Plague occurs when infected ...

The plague seems like a disease of a distant century, conjuring up the rat-infested cities of medieval ... is carried to humans in the bite of a flea that has first feasted on an infected rodent.

See, the plague was actually caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, spread by infected fleas and transported worldwide by rats. And the plague itself? Well, it never actually went away.

The small yellow rods seen resting on these purple blades are Yersinia pestis bacteria – the cause of bubonic plague. This bacterial infection is mainly spread to humans by fleas but can also be ...

Plague-bearing fleas thrive in the warm burrows of prairie ... Because squirrels, chipmunks, rats and rabbits can carry the disease, health officials warn against picking up a dead animal bare ...