Selected Chapters of Medical Zoology: Vertebrate Animals in Natural Foci of Human Diseases: From Plague to COVID-19

There are hundreds of natural-focus diseases in the world, periodically manifested in the form of epizootics among wild animals. In contact with nature, a person can become infected with zones. Some of the diseases, including very dangerous (rabies, plague, encephalitis, yellow fever), have been known to a person for a long time, others have recently appeared: AIDS, poultry and pork flu, Ebola"s fever, which had just announced the coronaviral infection of Covid-19 . It is possible to appear new with unpredictable consequences.
This Textbook was developed to the course of lectures for students of the Department of Zoology of the Vertebratic Faculty of Military Public Faculty of Moscow State University named after MV Lomonosov. Brief information is presented about the discoveries and theories of Russian and foreign researchers. The main attention is paid to the analysis of the role of vertebrates in the functioning of natural foci of human diseases. The characteristic of the pathogen, its main hosts and carriers in nature is given. The problems of the dynamics of the number of owners and carriers, factors of its regulation and self -regulation, population ecology and many others are discussed. The manual introduces readers with the course of the disease in animals and humans, ways of transmitting infection, the basics of epidemiology and epizootology of the underlying natural diseases.
A dictionary of the terms used is attached