Potential Pathogens Reported in Species of the Family Viverridae and Their Implications for Human and Animal Health

Wicker, L. V.; Canfield, P. J.; Higgins, D. P.

As human populations expand, and wild spaces are lost, there is an increasing overlap between human habitation and the distribution of wild species, particularly for species which have adapted well to human settlement (Campbell, 2009) . Tolerance of human presence by some viverrids has led to high density urban and peri-urban populations, where they are frequently seen as pests, scavenging food from garbage bins, gardens and orchards, and living in the roofs and wall spaces of houses (Ninomiya et al., 2003; Campbell, 2009) . Direct contact between viverrids and people in an urban environment leading to disease transmission was reported in Japan, where cat scratch fever (caused by the gram-negative bacteria Bartonella henselae) was transmitted to a man via a scratch from a free-ranging Masked palm civet (Table 2) (Sato et al., 2013) . Peri-urban wildlife may also serve as sylvatic reservoirs for zoonotic disease (Weiss and McMichael, 2004) , as reported for African civet, believed to contribute to the maintenance and cycling of the mongoose biotype of the rabies virus (Sabeta et al., 2008) , and Masked palm civet, considered a maintenance host of the enteric pathogens Salmonella, Campylobacter spp. and Yersinia (Table 2) in Japan (Lee et al., 2011) .