The Elephants in the Outbreak

They are considered the most noble creature to grace Earth. They have massive brains, complex forms of communication, the ingenuity for tool use, and the capacity to express emotions, including grief and empathy. Yet, as impressive as they are in size and majesty, elephants can still be felled by the most human of ailments: tuberculosis.Tuberculosis is an infection that has been infecting humans for millennia, but it is also a promiscuous organism that can infect the lungs of many other mammals. The ability of humans to transmit this infection to domesticated animals with a hearty sneeze or cough that sprays droplets harboring the bug has been known since the 19th century. It is an infection that has “let its roots into all animal species,” both wild and domestic (1).We have been aware of the ability of tuberculosis to infect elephants for millennia: a 2,000-year old Sanskrit treatise on veterinary medicine, ...