Can beardies catch herpes from me?

[loljelloclowdz]

I have a fever blister on my lip and I was wondering if I am posing a risk to Mari if I touch her and some of the herpes virus gets into her body. Animals catching another animal’s version of herpes is lethal to them, so I was wondering if Mari is in danger if we make skin to skin contact. This may be a stupid sounding question, but the viral world is huge and I don’t know if beardies have the same cell receptors humans have that make us able to be affected by a variety of herpes viruses.

[kingofnobbys]

Doubtful.

[loljelloclowdz]

Doubtful.

Okay, thanks. I did very minimal research (like the kind you’d do if you were assigned an essay, not like the kind in a lab) on like primary source documents and I didn’t see anything about HSV-1 transmission to reptiles, but I did see that as a host specific virus it is lethal to its non-specific hosts. I was like “uh oh, if beardies have herpes receptors then they might be able to pick up a human herpes simplex virus.” (there are loads of herpes viruses, it just refers to the class of virus, not what it does to the body.)