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Ohio Police Investigate ‘Zombie Raccoons’

Photo from Pixabay

A town in Ohio is getting quite a scare from what residents describe are raccoons acting like “zombies.”

Police in Youngstown have received over a dozen calls in recent weeks from people telling of raccoons acting oddly in broad daylight, according to local news outlets.

Robert Coggeshall, a local resident, said that he saw a raccoon last week while he was playing with his dogs outside, and that the creature was behaving strangely.

I looked over there and got distracted because I saw a raccoon coming our way,

he said. The raccoon “would stand up on his hind legs, which I’ve never seen a raccoon do before, and he would show his teeth and then he would fall over backward and go into almost a comatose condition,” Coggeshall said.

These raccoons don’t appear to have rabies, said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. It is likely that the animals have distemper, Live Science reports. Distemper is a severe viral disease that affects canines and other animals like foxes, coyotes, skunks and ferrets. The condition is caused by the canine distemper virus, which is part of the family of viruses known as paramyxoviruses, related to the virus that causes measles in people.

The distemper virus attacks respiratory, gastrointestinal and nervous systems of affected animals, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). Initial symptoms include fever, pus-like discharge from the eyes and nose, reduced appetite, coughing and vomiting.

As distemper develops, animals may exhibit more serious symptoms, such as muscle twitches, convulsions with jaw movements, seizures or paralysis. There may be changes in behavior like tilting the head. In wild creatures, distemper may appear to be similar to rabies, AVMA added.

Distemper can be prevented in dogs with a vaccine that is administered multiple times to puppies, followed by a booster shot for older dogs.

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