Hedgehogs Are a Source of Drug-Resistant Bacteria, Study Finds

Scientists chart how a battle between fungus and bacteria living on the skin of hedgehogs led to the emergence of a strain of MRSA that can infect cows and humans.

The tiny, spiny and adorable hedgehog is helping to upend conventional wisdom about the origins of drug-resistant bacterial infections that kill thousands of people each year.

In a study published Wednesday in Nature, a group of international scientists found that the bacteria that cause a tough-to-treat infection existed in nature long before modern antibiotics began to be mass produced in the 1940s. The drugs have saved countless lives, but the wide distribution of antibiotics in the decades since then has also spurred an evolutionary arms race with the pathogens they target, leading to the emergence of dreaded superbugs that have evaded our efforts to vanquish them with pharmaceuticals.

The key to the scientists’ paradigm-altering theory? Danish roadkill.