It was only a snippet in either the current Sports Afield or the one before it. A study concluded that when deer carcasses contaminated with CWD are eaten by cats - mountain lion, lynx, and other, 96 percent reduction of CWD prions ceased to exist. At this point the conjecture is that these cats' digestion has significantly stronger digestive juices (stronger than what??), and these digestive acids kill or dissolve or cause prions to disappear. Also CWD prions have no effect on cats consuming CWD contaminated meat.

I know the forum has members who are Veterinarians. As your time permits, find out about this astounding event.

That's fascinating.

The snippet to which I refer is Diana Rupp, "Cats Kill CWD", page 14 Sports Afield "Reports Afield", January/February 2024.

As I see it, the prions are in the brain and central nervous system, what ranchers here call specified risk material,, exposure should be minimal.

When digestion of proteins occurs. a protease breaks the prion (the CWD disease misfolded protein) into smaller pieces of amino acids. Since cats are very high consumers of proteins, specifically animal proteins, is seems reasonable that they might be able to break down (digest) the misfolded protein better than an animal that consumes just vegetation.

If that is true, then the protease from various animals should show varying degrees of ability to break down the misfolded proteins that are the problem. Cats and wolves might be expected to do a better job than birds. but within the species of birds, raptors might be better at it than birds which consume almost no mammal meat, and within the raptors, there might be foreseeable differences between those that scavenge deer carcasses for instance and those which consume live rodents more exclusively. If that is what it looks like there might be a lot of downstream good news. Maybe the reason that people do not seem to be susceptible to ungulate CWD it that human diet has consisted of enough varied protein sources to have produced protease capable of breaking THAT prion down. whereas the prion from say Kuru, is less digested.

It will probably take a lot of multi-disciplinary research to gain insight. It will likely take a lot more to make use of it.