When we look for examples of intelligent animals, certain species always leap to mind. Ourselves of course, and our close relatives the chimpanzees and other primates. Perhaps the cunning corvids – crows and scrub jays – with their prodigious memories and talent for deception. Dolphins and whales are pretty bright. Many would even agree that […]

Transmission of prion brain diseases such as bovine spongiform enecephalopathy (BSE) — also known as mad cow disease — and human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is generally attributed to the consumption of the brain or organ meat of infected animals but new research demonstrates lambs exposed to milk from prion-infected sheep with inflamed mammary glands […]

Ben W. Strowbridge, Ph.D, associate professor of Neuroscience and Physiology/Biophysics, and Yuan Gao, a Ph.D. student in the neurosciences program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, are the first to discover a form of synaptic memory in the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that processes the sense of smell. Their study, […]

Goats are tough, spirited animals, but they’re no match for scrapie, a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. Now, with a “helping hand” from science, the animals’ plight could take a turn for the better. Toward that end, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their collaborators have developed a live-animal test to detect scrapie in goats. […]

Prions, the pathogens that cause scrapie in sheep, can survive in the ground for several years, as researchers have discovered. Animals can become infected via contaminated pastures. It is not yet known whether the pathogens that cause BSE and CWD are equally resistant. A flock of sheep at pasture – a seemingly idyllic scene. But […]