127 Fun Facts About Veterinary

The world's first veterinary school was founded by royal order in 1761 in which city?

Lyon got the school by order of Louis XV's council, and within months its first students were being sent out to fight the cattle plague then devastating French herds.

Which French horseman founded the world's first veterinary school?

Claude Bourgelat first studied law, then ran a riding academy and learned animal anatomy from two surgeons before opening his school to fight cattle plague.

The word 'veterinary' comes from the Latin 'veterinae', meaning what?

Working animals, or beasts of burden, were 'veterinae' in Latin, so a Roman 'veterinarius' was a doctor of draft animals, in effect a cattle doctor.

Edward Jenner's famous 1796 vaccine was made from which animal disease?

Cowpox seemed to shield milkmaids from smallpox, so Jenner took matter from a milkmaid's cowpox sore and put it into his gardener's young son, who then proved immune.

Which monarch granted the royal charter that created Britain's Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons?

Victoria had been queen for nearly seven years when the 1844 charter set up the college, after vets Thomas Mayer and Thomas Walton Mayer campaigned for one to protect the profession.

In 1922, who became the first woman recognised as a veterinary surgeon by the Royal College?

Aleen Cust trained in Edinburgh but was refused the exams as a woman, so she practised in Ireland for years without the diploma before a 1919 equality law opened the register to her.

Which Midwestern university runs America's oldest surviving veterinary college, founded in 1879?

Iowa State opened the first public veterinary college in the United States; the private schools that came before it had all closed by the 1920s, leaving it the oldest still running.

The first D.V.M. degree granted in the United States was awarded in 1876 by which university?

Cornell's first D.V.M. went to Daniel Salmon, the man Salmonella is named after, although it was his assistant Theobald Smith who actually found the bacterium.

The oldest surviving veterinary text, a treatise on cattle ailments, comes from which civilization?

Ancient Egypt's Kahun veterinary papyrus is nearly 4,000 years old; Flinders Petrie dug its fragments out of a Middle Kingdom town in 1889, and they are now in London.

What was the cattle illness caused by Brucella abortus long called, after its Danish discoverer?

Bang's disease honours the vet Bernhard Bang, who found the bacterium in 1897; it makes cows miscarry and gives people undulant fever, which they can catch from unpasteurised milk.

Which 9-year-old boy, bitten by a rabid dog, was famously treated with Pasteur's rabies vaccine in 1885?

Joseph Meister had been badly bitten and was expected to die; he survived the course of injections and as an adult worked as a caretaker at the Pasteur Institute.

Which cattle plague became in 2011 only the second disease ever declared eradicated worldwide?

Rinderpest joined smallpox on the list; fear of it had led to the founding of the World Organisation for Animal Health in 1924, the body that confirmed its end in 2011.

The word 'rabies' comes from a Latin word meaning what?

Madness or rage is what the Latin 'rabies' meant, from 'rabere', to rave; the disease's older name, hydrophobia, comes from the victims' dread of water.

What was the real name of the Yorkshire vet who wrote as James Herriot?

Alf Wight practised in Yorkshire for almost 50 years, and the books he began publishing in his fifties went on to sell some 60 million copies.

The real James Herriot ran his practice in which North Yorkshire market town?

Thirsk still draws fans of the books: his old surgery at 23 Kirkgate is now the World of James Herriot museum, visited by thousands of people every year.

In the Herriot books, the fictional town where the practice is based is called what?

Darrowby, he wrote, was a composite of the market towns he knew plus 'a fair chunk of my own imagination'; the 2020 series films it in the Dales village of Grassington.

The Herriot pen name came from a Scottish footballer playing for Birmingham City in which position?

Goalkeeper Jim Herriot was playing for Birmingham City against Manchester United when the vet, barred from advertising under his own name, saw him in goal and borrowed the name.

The real James Herriot qualified in 1939 from a veterinary college in which city?

Glasgow Veterinary College took him six years to get through; he had set his heart on the job as a boy after reading a Meccano Magazine article about vets.

In James Herriot's books, the eccentric senior partner Siegfried Farnon was based on which real vet?

Donald Sinclair told the author the first book was a test of their friendship, yet he was the one who gave visiting fans guided tours of the surgery.

Who played James Herriot in the original BBC series of All Creatures Great and Small?

Christopher Timothy was told to keep his speech neutral for the part, even though the author he was playing spoke with a soft Scottish lilt.

Which actor plays James Herriot in the 2020 revival of All Creatures Great and Small?

Nicholas Ralph was making his television debut, so he went through a 'vet bootcamp' first to learn the procedures he would have to perform on camera.

The 2020 All Creatures Great and Small premiered on which UK broadcaster?

In the US it airs on PBS Masterpiece, and neither this version nor the BBC one was filmed in the real town because it had grown too big.

Reality TV vet Dr. Jan Pol was born in which country?

Netherlands-born Jan Pol first came to America as a high-school exchange student in the 1960s, which is how he met Diane, his future wife and co-star.

The Incredible Dr. Pol is filmed at a rural practice in which US state?

Michigan's shortage of rural vets keeps the clinic busy: he opened Pol Veterinary Services in Weidman in 1981 after ten years working for another practice.

Which author created Doctor Dolittle, the country doctor who learns to talk to animals?

Hugh Lofting invented the doctor in illustrated letters to his children from the trenches of the First World War, because the real news was too horrible or too dull.

The TV series Bondi Vet follows veterinary surgeon Chris Brown in which city?

Sydney's Bondi gave the show its name, but when CBS aired it in America the title was changed to 'Dr. Chris: Pet Vet'.

Which game-show host signed off for decades by urging viewers to have their pets spayed or neutered?

Bob Barker closed The Price Is Right with the plea from the early 1980s and gave millions to neutering programmes; Drew Carey kept the line when he took over in 2007.

Which popular bouquet flower can cause fatal kidney failure in cats that merely lick its pollen?

Lilies are toxic to cats in every part, from petals and pollen to the water in the vase, and can destroy the kidneys in under three days; dogs get only a stomach upset.

Which is the largest compartment of a cow's four-part stomach?

The rumen works as a giant fermentation vat where microbes break down grass the cow could never digest alone, turning it into the fatty acids that are her main fuel.

Farmers get cows to swallow what object to prevent 'hardware disease'?

A magnet settles in the cow's stomach and holds on to stray nails and baling wire, so the sharp metal cannot pierce the stomach wall.

Horses are physically unable to do which of these?

Vomit cannot come back up because a tight ring of muscle seals the top of a horse's stomach and the gullet joins it at a steep angle, so whatever a horse swallows has only one way out.

Which of these farm mothers carries her young the longest?

Mare pregnancies run about eleven months, so racehorse breeders in the northern hemisphere, where foals all turn a year older on January 1, try to time births for the first weeks of the year.

Vets often remove a horse's small vestigial 'wolf teeth' because they interfere with what?

The bit lies in the gap in front of the cheek teeth, right where wolf teeth sit, so many vets pull them before a young horse starts work in a bridle.

In horses, 'colic' is a general term for pain located where?

Abdomen: colic is a symptom rather than a diagnosis, covering everything from a mild bout of gas to a twisted gut that needs emergency surgery.

What is the V-shaped rubbery pad on the underside of a horse's hoof called?

The frog cushions each footfall and, squeezed at every stride, helps pump blood back up the leg; left standing in muck, it picks up the infection called thrush.

Triple Crown winner Secretariat was put down in 1989 after developing which hoof condition?

Laminitis ended Secretariat's life at 19; he was then buried whole at Claiborne Farm, when most champions are honoured with the burial of only the head, heart and hooves.

A horse's height in hands is measured from the ground to which part of its body?

The withers, the bony ridge at the base of the neck, stay put while the head bobs up and down, so they give a fixed point; each hand is four inches, a size fixed under Henry VIII.

Which animal has blood pressure about twice as high as a human's?

Giraffes need the pressure to push blood all the way up the neck to the brain, and tight tissue wrapped round their lower legs works like support stockings to stop fluid pooling there.

Which land mammal has the longest pregnancy, at about 22 months?

Elephants carry a calf for about 22 months, which gives its brain and trunk extra time to develop; the newborn can stand and nurse soon after birth.

Like humans but unlike most mammals, guinea pigs cannot make which nutrient and must get it from food?

Vitamin C must come from fresh vegetables or fortified pellets, or guinea pigs get scurvy; that weakness made them the lab animal that helped scientists track down the vitamin.

A second pair of upper incisors puts rabbits, hares and pikas in which order instead of the rodents?

Lagomorphs have a small peg tooth tucked behind each big upper incisor, four in all where rodents have two, which is why rabbits were split off from the rodents.

Which of these animals has the highest normal body temperature?

Chicken: birds run several degrees hotter than mammals, so a reading that would mean a raging fever in a cow or a horse is perfectly normal for a hen.

Which fruit, harmless to people, can cause sudden kidney failure in dogs even in small amounts?

Grapes and raisins can shut down a dog's kidneys, and no safe amount is known: even a single grape has made some dogs seriously ill. One theory blames the fruit's tartaric acid.

Heartworm larvae are passed to dogs by the bite of which pest?

Mosquitoes pick up baby worms with an infected dog's blood, and the larvae must mature inside the insect for about two weeks before a later bite can pass them on.

Despite the name, adult heartworms most often live in which vessels?

Pulmonary arteries, which carry blood from the heart to the lungs, are where the adult worms settle, so the lung vessels are damaged long before the heart itself fails.

In the United States, contact with which animals causes most human deaths from rabies?

Bats infected seven in ten of the Americans who died of rabies in a 2019 CDC count, while worldwide it is dog bites that cause nearly all human cases.

Canine parvovirus is 98 percent genetically identical to which cat virus?

Feline panleukopenia virus is thought to have needed only two or three mutations to jump to dogs, and the new disease swept round the world in the late 1970s.

Which bacterium is the most common cause of kennel cough?

Bordetella bronchiseptica spreads so easily among dogs kept in close quarters that vets advise a 'Bordetella' vaccine before a stay in boarding kennels.

Canine distemper virus belongs to the same family as the virus that causes which human disease?

Measles is a close cousin of the distemper virus, which was the leading infectious killer of dogs before vaccines and still circulates in raccoons, foxes and ferrets.

Which breed is about ten times more likely than average to suffer gastric dilatation-volvulus, or bloat?

One study put its lifetime risk at 42 percent, and many owners opt for a preventive gastropexy that tacks the stomach in place.

The sweetener xylitol is dangerous to dogs because it triggers what?

A rapid drop in blood sugar follows because a dog's pancreas answers xylitol with a flood of insulin; it can hit within an hour of eating sugar-free gum.

Which compound in chocolate is toxic to dogs because they metabolise it far more slowly than humans?

Theobromine is far more concentrated in unsweetened baking chocolate than in milk chocolate, so an ounce of the dark stuff is several times more dangerous to a dog.

Collie-type dogs with an MDR1 gene defect can be poisoned by which antiparasitic drug?

Ivermectin is normally kept out of the brain by a pump protein, but dogs with the faulty MDR1 gene lack a working one, so the drug can reach the brain and poison them at doses other dogs tolerate.

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine honoured a livestock wormer that also fights which tropical disease in people?

River blindness has been pushed back across Africa by a drug first sold to worm farm animals; the microbe that makes it turned up in soil collected beside a Japanese golf course.

Ketamine, a staple veterinary anaesthetic, was extensively used for surgical anaesthesia in which war?

Vietnam War medics were the first to use it widely after its approval in 1970, because it dulls pain without shutting down a patient's breathing as older anaesthetics could.

Spaying a female animal means surgically removing which organs?

The ovaries come out in a standard spay, usually with the uterus as well, which puts an end to a female's heats and so to any unplanned litters.

Declawing a cat, or onychectomy, involves amputating what?

The end bones of the toes have to go because the claw grows from them, the equivalent of cutting off a human finger at the last knuckle; dozens of countries ban the operation.

'Cherry eye' in dogs is a prolapse of a gland attached to which structure?

The third eyelid's gland makes a large share of a dog's tears, so vets stitch it back into place rather than cut it out, which would risk dry eye.

The 'cone of shame' is formally an Elizabethan collar, named after which item of Tudor-era clothing?

The ruff, the stiff pleated collar worn in Elizabeth I's day, gave the cone its formal name; vets fit one to stop a pet licking or chewing at a wound.

Where is an identification microchip normally implanted in a dog or cat?

Between the shoulder blades the skin is loose enough to take the rice-grain-sized chip by injection; it has no battery and cannot track a lost pet, only give its ID number to a scanner.

The bacterium Bartonella henselae causes which illness that people catch from their pets?

Cat-scratch disease usually shows up as swollen, tender lymph nodes near the scratch a week or more later, and most cases clear up on their own.

Which parasite, the reason pregnant women are told to avoid litter boxes, reproduces sexually only inside cats?

Toxoplasma can infect almost any warm-blooded animal but breeds only in the gut of cats, whose droppings then spread it; undercooked meat is another common way people catch it.

What is the most common hormonal disease diagnosed in cats?

Hyperthyroidism makes older cats lose weight despite a ravenous appetite; a single injection of radioactive iodine, which settles in the overactive gland, is the treatment of choice.

Feline immunodeficiency virus, a cat relative of HIV, spreads between cats mainly through what?

Deep bite wounds from fights pass the virus in saliva, so unneutered tomcats that roam outdoors are most at risk, while sharing bowls or grooming rarely spreads it.

The Coggins test, a blood test developed in the early 1970s, screens horses for which disease?

Equine infectious anaemia has no cure, and infected horses carry the virus for life, so a negative Coggins test is demanded before most shows and trips across state lines.

To help flat-faced dogs such as pugs breathe, vets widen the nostrils and trim which overlong structure?

The soft palate is too long for a squashed skull, so its tip hangs into the airway and blocks the flow of air; trimming it is routine surgery for bulldogs and pugs.

Mad cow disease, or BSE, is caused by what kind of infectious agent?

A prion is a misfolded protein rather than a germ; cattle picked it up from feed containing meat-and-bone meal from infected animals, and the human form is called vCJD.

Which livestock outbreak led to millions of animals being culled in the United Kingdom in 2001?

Foot-and-mouth disease led to the slaughter of more than six million animals and cost Britain about £8 billion; it even pushed the 2001 general election back by a month.

Myxoma virus was deliberately released in Australia in the 1950s to control which introduced pest?

European rabbits fell from an estimated 600 million to about 100 million after the 1950 release, but the survivors bred resistance and their numbers climbed back.

What is the proper term for an autopsy carried out on an animal?

A necropsy is how vets found that the racehorse Secretariat had a heart about twice the normal size, which some think helped explain his record-breaking speed.

What name do doctors and vets give to diseases that pass from animals to people?

Zoonoses range from rabies to ringworm, and the World Health Organization counts more than 200 of them, which is why vets and doctors now work together under the banner of One Health.

Which Indian emperor declared that he had provided medical treatment for animals as well as people?

Ashoka's second rock edict says two kinds of medical care were set up across his realm, one for people and one for animals; later edicts put many species under his protection.

The Hippiatrica, a 5th- or 6th-century compilation on horse medicine, comes from which empire?

Byzantine editors stitched it together from older Greek horse-doctors' manuals, among them the work of Apsyrtus, a vet sometimes called the father of veterinary medicine.

A 1356 push by London's Lord Mayor to improve the care of horses led to which livery company in 1674?

Farriers working in the City were gathered into a fellowship by the Lord Mayor in 1356, and Charles II granted the Worshipful Company its royal charter in 1674.

Which undefeated racehorse's skeleton is kept at the Royal Veterinary College, whose first professor dissected him?

Eclipse died in 1789, and the Frenchman Charles Vial de Sainbel made his name by dissecting him; two years later Sainbel became the first professor of the new London veterinary college.

Louis Pasteur proved his vaccine against which livestock disease in a public trial on sheep and cattle in 1881?

Anthrax killed the unvaccinated sheep within days at Pouilly-le-Fort, while every vaccinated animal was alive when the crowd of observers returned.

Psittacosis, a lung infection people can catch from their pets, is better known by what name?

Parrot fever spreads when people breathe in dust from infected birds' droppings; an outbreak in 1929 and 1930, traced to imported parrots, set off serious research into it.

The verb 'to vet', meaning to check someone thoroughly, began as slang for health checks in which sport?

Horse racing required a veterinarian to pass every runner as healthy and sound before it could start, and the word later took on the general sense of checking anything.

The word 'vaccine' comes from the Latin for cow, after which English doctor's use of cowpox against smallpox?

Edward Jenner named cowpox Variolae vaccinae, 'smallpox of the cow', and in 1796 used pus from a milkmaid's cowpox sore to protect an eight-year-old boy against smallpox.

The first pet insurance policy issued in the United States, in 1982, covered which famous screen dog?

Lassie, the TV collie, got that policy almost a century after the world's first pet insurance, which Claes Virgin wrote in Sweden in 1890.

To prevent hardware disease, caused by swallowed nails and baling wire, what do farmers feed their cattle?

A magnet fed to the animal at about a year old settles in the reticulum and holds stray metal there, so sharp pieces cannot pierce the stomach lining.

A mutated taste-receptor gene, shared by wild and domestic cats, leaves them unable to detect which basic taste?

Sweet is lost on cats because they lack the TAS1R2 protein, one of the two needed to build the sweetness receptor, which is why sugar holds no appeal for them.

Which fruit, toxic to dogs fresh or dried, can cause sudden kidney failure, possibly because of its tartaric acid?

Grapes puzzled vets for years because only some dogs fall ill; a 2023 study found that tartaric acid poisons dog kidney cells but not human ones.

Despite the name, ringworm, which pets can pass to their owners, is caused by what kind of organism?

A fungus causes ringworm by infecting skin, hair and nails; no worm is involved, and the name comes from the red, circular rash it leaves.

Frenetic random activity periods, or FRAPs, is the scientific name for which familiar behaviour of dogs and cats?

The zoomies have no known cause, though vets notice these sudden bursts of frantic running often come at moments of transition, such as an owner's return home.

Which marsupial is endangered by contagious facial tumours that spread when the animals bite one another?

Tasmanian devil numbers have fallen by more than 80% since the disease was first seen in 1996; the tumour cells themselves pass from one animal to the next.

Which popular cut flower can cause fatal kidney failure in cats that merely lick its pollen off their fur?

Lilies are so toxic to cats that vets treat any contact as an emergency, yet exactly how the plant wrecks the kidney tubules has never been worked out.

Ethylene glycol, a chemical that poisons pets which lap up spills, is the main ingredient in which car fluid?

Antifreeze sometimes has a bittering agent added to put off animals and children, though it has not been found to work; kidney failure can follow within three days.

Which is the only US state free of rabies, a status protected by strict quarantine rules for arriving pets?

Hawaii can hold an arriving dog or cat in quarantine for up to 120 days, and because the virus is absent, resident pets are not required to be vaccinated against it.

White cats with blue eyes are far more likely than other cats to be born with which condition?

Deafness in an odd-eyed white cat, which has only one blue eye, is more likely to affect the ear on the same side as that blue eye.

Dogs cool themselves mostly by panting, but through which part of the body do they also sweat?

Paw pads do the sweating because the rest of a dog's skin has few sweat glands; panting sheds far more heat by moving air over the moist tongue and lungs.

Many churches hold a blessing of pets each 4 October, the feast day of which patron saint of animals?

Francis of Assisi is said to have preached to the birds and tamed the wolf of Gubbio, and Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican churches all mark his day with animal blessings.

Psittacosis, which caused a worldwide human outbreak in 1929–30, is a bacterial fever nicknamed after which pet birds?

Parrots imported for the pet trade were linked to the 1929–30 outbreak, and the scare that followed pushed scientists into serious research on the disease.

A male cat is a tom, but what do breeders and vets call an unspayed female cat?

A queen carries her kittens for about 65 days, and once spayed she is sometimes called a molly instead.

Nine-banded armadillos are among the few mammals other than humans that can catch which ancient disease?

Leprosy is thought to have reached armadillos from early European explorers of the Americas, and people can now catch it back by handling the animals or eating their meat.

Lyme disease, a bacterial illness that vets vaccinate dogs against, is named after a town in which US state?

Connecticut's towns of Lyme and Old Lyme gave the illness its name in 1975, after a cluster of cases there was first mistaken for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

An unmated female of which pet can die of anaemia simply by staying in heat too long?

Ferret females only come out of heat once mated, so an unbred jill's own oestrogen builds up until it shuts down her bone marrow.

White-nose syndrome, first photographed in a New York cave in 2006, has killed millions of which animals?

Bats show the pale growth around their muzzles and wings during hibernation, the very time their resistance to the infection falls to almost nothing.

Chronic wasting disease, first identified at a Colorado research station in 1967, attacks which animal family?

Deer with the disease lose weight, drool and stop fearing people, which is how it picked up the nickname zombie deer disease; elk, moose and caribou catch it too.

Milk fever, which strikes dairy cattle just after calving, is caused by low blood levels of which mineral?

Calcium pours into the first milk faster than the body can release it from bone, and despite the name the animal's temperature does not usually rise.

At Pouilly-le-Fort in 1881, Louis Pasteur publicly vaccinated a flock of sheep against which livestock disease?

Anthrax left the unvaccinated sheep dead or dying within two days, while every vaccinated one survived, proving the first effective vaccine against a bacterial disease.

Which fatal brain disease of sheep, known since at least 1732, is named for how sufferers rub off their fleece?

Scrapie drives affected animals to rub compulsively against rocks, trees and fences until the wool comes away, yet it does not appear to pass to people.

Onions, garlic and chives are dangerous to dogs and cats because they damage what in the bloodstream?

Red blood cells are damaged by every member of the Allium family, which can leave a pet anaemic; cats are more susceptible than dogs.

Which nut can leave a dog too weak in the hind legs to stand within 12 hours of eating it?

Macadamia poisoning remains a puzzle, since nobody knows which compound is to blame, yet most dogs recover fully within 24 to 48 hours.

Which fruit contains persin, a toxin that can fatally damage the hearts of caged pet birds?

Avocado carries the toxin in its fruit, leaves, stems and seeds; caged birds are especially sensitive, while the ripe flesh is generally considered harmless to people.

Which charity, begun at a London coffee house in 1824, is the world's oldest animal welfare organisation?

RSPCA supporters at that first meeting in Old Slaughter's Coffee House included William Wilberforce, better known for his campaign against the slave trade.

Which award, first given in 1943 to honour animals serving in war, is nicknamed the animals' Victoria Cross?

The Dickin Medal was created by Maria Dickin, who also set up the veterinary charity PDSA, for animals showing conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty.

Irish vet Noel Fitzpatrick operates on pets thought beyond saving in which long-running British TV series?

The Supervet has been filmed since 2014 at Fitzpatrick's own referral hospital in Eashing, Surrey, where his team attempts surgery on pets other clinics cannot help.

The American Veterinary Medical Association's emblem features the single-serpent rod of which Greek god?

Asclepius and his staff are today's predominant symbol of medicine; the similar caduceus, with two snakes and a pair of wings, is sometimes used in its place by mistake.

Which machine, invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, sterilises surgical instruments with steam at 121 °C?

Autoclave cycles hold the steam on the instruments for 15 to 60 minutes; Chamberland was building on Denis Papin's steam digester of 1679.

Dogs, with only two types of colour-sensing cone in the eye, struggle to tell apart which pair of colours?

Red and green look alike to dogs, whose world is made up of yellows, blues and greys, much like that of a person with the commonest form of colour blindness.

Which lip-curling grimace do cats and many hoofed mammals pull to draw scents into the vomeronasal organ?

Flehmen comes from a German word meaning to bare the upper teeth, and was coined in 1930 by Karl Max Schneider, the director of Leipzig zoo.

What is the mirror-like layer behind the retina that makes the eyes of cats and dogs shine in headlights?

Tapetum lucidum tissue bounces light back through the retina for a second pass, boosting night vision at the cost of a slightly blurred image; humans have none.

Which instinctive mid-air twist, perfected by kittens at six to nine weeks, lets a falling cat land feet-first?

The righting reflex works because cats have an unusually flexible backbone and no working collarbone, while the inner ear tells them which way is down.

On a pet's prescription, the Latin abbreviation PO, short for per os, means the medicine should be given how?

By mouth is the literal meaning of per os, and the related chart note NPO, nil per os, orders that a patient be given nothing to eat before an anaesthetic.

Which Australian marsupial is threatened by a chlamydia epidemic that inflames its eyes and urinary tract?

Koala admissions at one New South Wales rehabilitation centre over 30 years were led by trauma, with signs of chlamydia the next most common cause.

Which painkiller given to cattle is blamed for the collapse of South Asia's vultures, which fed on treated carcasses?

Diclofenac in a carcass destroys a vulture's kidneys, and modelling showed that fewer than 1% of carcasses carrying it were enough to crash the population.

Which opioid, sold as M99 and over a thousand times stronger than morphine, is used to immobilise elephants?

Etorphine is so potent that the veterinary-strength drug is fatal to humans, which is why it is legally available only to vets and strictly controlled.

Which German pioneer of cellular pathology coined the term 'zoonoses' for infections shared by people and animals?

Rudolf Virchow was the first to establish the link between infectious diseases of people and animals, and he launched comparative pathology to study the two side by side.

Which Ivy League university awards its veterinary graduates the Latin-titled VMD degree rather than the usual DVM?

Penn opened its school in 1884 as the only veterinary school developed in association with a medical school; VMD stands for Veterinariae Medicinae Doctoris.

Which Alabama university opened the first veterinary school at a historically Black college?

Tuskegee added the school in 1944 under its president Frederick D. Patterson, himself a veterinarian, who launched the United Negro College Fund that same year.

CC, the first cloned pet, was a kitten born in 2001 through work at which American university?

Texas A&M scientists produced a kitten that looked nothing like her calico genetic donor, Rainbow, because coat pattern depends on X-inactivation, not on DNA alone.

Salmonella is named after vet Daniel Salmon, but which research assistant of his actually discovered the bacterium?

Theobald Smith isolated the bacterium in 1885 while working under Salmon, yet in 1900 Joseph Lignières named the whole genus after Smith's boss instead.

American foulbrood, caused by the spore-forming bacterium Paenibacillus larvae, is a disease of which farmed animals?

Honey bees catch it as grubs under three days old by swallowing spores in their food, and burning the infected colony is often the only way to stop it spreading.

The Q in Q fever, a disease people catch from sheep, goats and cattle, stands for which word?

Query was chosen while the cause was still unknown, in preference to names such as abattoir fever that might have tarnished the cattle industry or the state of Queensland.

Which confectionery giant, owner of Pedigree and Whiskas, also runs the Banfield and VCA animal hospital chains?

Mars is far better known for chocolate bars, yet its Banfield chain alone has more than 1,000 clinics, many of them inside PetSmart stores.

Which wild mammal was culled in parts of England from 2013 in a bid to stop tuberculosis spreading to cattle?

Badger culling was wound down after 2024, when the government stopped granting new licences and turned to vaccination to stop the disease spreading.