Human Interactions
Two species of Oryzomys, O. antillarum and O. nelsoni, have gone extinct since the 19th century, and a third, O. peninsulae, is unlikely to be still extant. Their extinction may have been caused by habitat destruction and by introduced species such as the small Asian mongoose and the brown and black rat. These same causes may threaten O. gorgasi, which the IUCN Red List assesses as "Endangered". O. albiventer has been affected by human alteration of its habitat, but likely still survives. In contrast, the widespread species, the marsh rice rat and O. couesi, are common and of no conservation concern—indeed, both have been considered a pest—but some populations are threatened. Like these two species, O. dimidiatus is assessed as "Least Concern" by the Red List.
The marsh rice rat is the natural reservoir of the Bayou virus, the second most common cause of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the United States. Two other hantaviruses, Catacamas virus and Playa de Oro virus, occur in O. couesi in Honduras and western Mexico, respectively, but are not known to infect humans.
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Famous quotes containing the words human and/or interactions:
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“In our interactions with people, a benevolent hypocrisy is frequently required—acting as though we do not see through the motives of their actions.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)