Yeah! There is reason for some fear of dead animals, but I think it’s not as dangerous as most people think. Consider the carved horn and tortoiseshell you see at gift shops, gator heads, coyote teeth, raccoon hats, etc. No one’s concerned. The FDA regulates food safety, but consider the amount of dead animal people eat and how often they get sick from it, yet we consider that par for the course.
This is also a tough question because most people don’t want to hear that something *isn’t that dangerous,* they just want warnings. Or, they only feel that talking about danger is responsible. But I believe in risk assessment, instead of just talking about what could go wrong, so here’s my assessment.
Most diseases die pretty quickly once the host dies, and most aren’t transferable to humans (although as we know from Covid, it is very bad when they make the jump! But keep in mind that happened where there were a ton of people and live animals pooping on each other in close proximity.)
One issue when an animal dies is the fleas and ticks leave the body and run to the end of the hairs, desperate for a new host. Depending on where you live, your risk assessment regarding insect-spread diseases like lyme will be different. I don’t usually pick up fresh deads for that reason and because they are stinky and heavy and they also require some processing that I have less experience with. In that case you could hide the body and come back for it later, or I have a few times skinned and disemboweled animals (Gross Youtube Tutorial). I’m pretty sure I learned from this child but I can only find how he tans hides.
For fresher things, you can use gloves and freeze them if you have a freezer for….not food….that will kill the bugs. Fresh deads also have the benefit of generally being less weathered/chewed on/broken up. But I definitely don’t bring them inside unless I have to and they’re frozen or too fresh to start stinking.
I’ve heard to stay away from armadillos because they carry leprosy. I haven’t actually researched it because I’ve never seen one.
If you’re transporting animal remains, try to be cautious of diseases you could take from one area to another. There are many laws about what states you can bring deer parts into and out of (which I doubt can be enforced because there are so many carved antlers in gift shops) because it’s important not to spread chronic wasting disease. CWD is a prion disease, and unfortunately prions don’t die when the host dies, because they can’t die at all, because they are not alive. There has been a lot of debate regarding whether CWD spread to humans, but when doing your risk assessment, consider the huge portion of the population that regularly eats deer and has never reported a case of CWD transmission. Low risk for humans, but definitely pay attention to those laws because it’s a big problem for deer.
I live in a very dry area, and dry bones are not really dangerous to humans IMO. Everything you do, from crossing the street to eating a carrot comes with some risk, and handling dry bones I’d put on par with with picking up rocks and sticks. You may even have some jewelry made of dry bones. Even if there is some dry, mummified flesh on them, the animal has probably been dead for months or years. In that case I walk around back to the yeard instead of taking it in the house but TBH I do touch it with my bare hands when I try to remove the flesh, and then wash my hands.
If you want to collect and live in a wet area, I might just say, wear gloves and double bag, then get them into a bucket for maceration ASAP. Or whatever technique you like, maybe burial would work ok in a wet environment, I actually don’t have much experience collecting and processing in wet environs.
Followers, did I miss anything specifically related to human health? I know you want to talk about laws and ethics and practical tactics but I can’t be here all night lol so let’s keep it to human health when collecting bones, and I enjoy seeing sources!
