[Little savage mammalians: free-living amoebae vectors? (author's transl)].

We tried to prove the part of the little savage mammalians as active intermediate hosts to the intestine level for some free-living limax amoebae of limax group. For this we participated to several trapping-season in Britanny and in Tunisia. From 273 samplings, we studied 224 with the results thereafter: the rodents are the first (213/224) and the 3 most frequent species are also the most often hosts: 20/128 A. sylvaticus, 9/58 C. glareolus and 4/16 M. spretus. There must be a double positive factor: life in burrow near the earth and meal type. The 78 samplings for which we checked the free-living amoebae by stool examination, are the most poor by culture: 2/78 (2.5 p. 100). This lack explains the negative stool examination. The isolated amoebae belong for 31/34 to the genus Acanthamoeba, of one potentially pathogenic: A. hatchetti. Moreover the Finistere biotop appears particularly poor (2.5 p. 100 carriers in front of 21 p. 100 in Ille-et-Vilaine and 24 p. 100 in Tunisia).