Squirrels Could Make Monkeypox a Forever Problem

In the summer of 2003, just weeks after an outbreak of monkeypox sickened about 70 people across the Midwest, Mark Slifka visited “the super-spreader,” he told me, “who infected half of Wisconsin’s cases.”

Chewy, a prairie dog, had by that point succumbed to the disease, which he’d almost certainly caught in an exotic-animal facility that he’d shared with infected pouched rats from Ghana. But his owners’ other prairie dog, Monkey—named for the way he clambered about his cage—had contracted the pathogen and survived. “I was a little worried,” said Slifka, an immunologist at Oregon Health & Science University. All the traits that made Monkey a charismatic pet also made him . He cuddled and nibbled his owners; when they left the house, he’d swaddle himself in their clothing until they returned. “It was sweet,” Slifka told me. “But I was like, ‘Can Monkey be in his cage when we come over?’”