When the Moon is Full, so is Veterinary Emergency Room
from Wire Reports
July 18, 2007 - When the full moon rises, dogs and cats go wild - and get hurt.
Dogs and cats suffering heart attacks, seizures and trauma end up at Colorado State University's Veterinary Medical Center emergency room in higher numbers around the full moon, according to a new study.
"We were dumbfounded when we actually saw the increase," said Raegan Wells, a CSU veterinary resident and primary author of a paper appearing in the current Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
It all started with people quipping "it must be a full moon" when the emergency room got busy, Wells said.
"We thought, 'Oh, this is nonsense. Let's just look at it once and for all and be done with it,"' Wells said.
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After reviewing records from 10 years and 12,000 animals, the researchers found that during the fullest 12 days in the moon's 28-day cycle, cat emergency visits were up 23 percent and dog visits up 28 percent.
"I'm skeptical that there's any true clinical application for our findings, and I don't know how to explain it," Wells said. "But it is very interesting."
One possible explanation is that cats spend more risky time outdoors time hunting when the moon's light is bright enough for the felines to catch the twitch of a mouse's whiskers, Wells said.
But cat-trauma emergencies alone couldn't explain the spikes, Wells said; the increase wasn't statistically significant until all cat and dog emergency categories were included.
There also was no evidence of dogs behaving more aggressively during such lunar phases.
Maybe it's the pet owners.
Pet owners might be more likely to hustle an animal in for emergency treatment when it's lighter outside, said Kevin Fitzgerald, a veterinarian with Alameda East Veterinary Clinic in Denver.
A human connection?
Skeptical of the new results, Fitzgerald said he doubts that cats and dogs behave differently during full moons.
"You know, the moon is mysterious and there's a lot of intrigue here - vampires, werewolves, the word 'lunatic,"' Fitzgerald said.
"But I'd want to see the statistics," he said.
"They have tried, in human medicine, to link the full moon with more accidents, more violence. ... And little of it has held up."
Human psychiatric admissions do not wax and wane with the moon, according to a San Diego study published last year.
But women with epilepsy were more likely to have seizures during full moons, according to another report, out of Greece.
Last month, police in Sussex, England, told reporters they planned to bulk up staffing on full-moon nights after academics found a link between violent "and strange" behavior and the full moon.
