Part 2 of 3

• Germs from your household pet can make you sick.
• The rabies virus, which can infect cats and dogs, is one of the most serious and deadly of these microbes.
• Dog and cat saliva can contain any of more than 100 different germs that can make you sick.
• Warm-blooded animals are not the only ones that can cause you harm. Pet reptiles such as turtles, snakes, and iguanas can transmit Salmonella bacteria.
  
  
• You can get microbes from tiny critters.
• Mosquitoes may be the most common insect carriers (vectors) of pathogens. Misquitoes can pick up the germ that causes malaria and transmit it through a bite to a person.
  
  
• Fleas can transmit the bacteria that causes the plague from rats to humans.
  
  
• Ticks, which are more closely related to crabs than to insects, are another common vector. The tiny deer tick can infect humans with the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, which it picks up from deer.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Source: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/publications/microbes.htm#a