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Snake Fungal Disease imperils Illinois’ smallest rattlesnake

Researchers with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Wildlife Epidemiology lab carefully place a massasauga rattlesnake in a bucket for further study. (Photo by Mike Dreslik)

In 2010, Illinois Natural History Survey Director Mike Dreslik found something strange on the road. It was a massasauga rattlesnake, an endangered species in Illinois, and its head was deformed, covered in strange sores. He called up his friend Matt Allender, a wildlife epidemiologist.
“I was thinking I was going just to find a smushed head from hits by cars, and what we found was not at all that,” Allender recalled.

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