The Black Death: A New Culprit?

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/natural-histories/black-death-new-culprit

When it comes to the Black Death, rats are usually cast as the villains of the piece - and with good reason. After all, it was most likely thanks to them that the plague (Yersinia pestis) was reintroduced to Europe. Though there has been some debate about how and where the original infection occurred, there is little doubt that Italian traders caught the disease from rat fleas in Black Sea ports before taking it back to Messina aboard Genoese galleys in October 1347. Granted, rats were probably not solely responsible for the speed with which the pestilence spread in the weeks that followed. In 2018, researchers from the universities of Ferrara and Oslo demonstrated that human fleas and lice played at least as important a role in transmission between people. But because rats can tolerate higher concentrations of the bacillus in their blood, and tend to live in close proximity to humans, they greatly amplified its virulence. Exactly how many people died is difficult to establish, but it is estimated that, in the period 1347-53, the plague killed 30-50 per cent of the European population. Understandably, rats have borne most of the blame.

But is this really fair? A recent study suggests marmots might have been just as guilty.

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