“This discovery shows for the first time that a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus has reached Antarctica despite the distance and natural barriers that separate it from other continents,” the officials said. Said Sunday.
Over the past few years, this highly contagious disease has spread across the world along bird migration routes, devastating both wildlife and livestock.Bird flu has now arrived on the southernmost continent, threatening this unique continent. Wildlife including the iconic penguin.
The virus jumps from birds to mammals and has proven strong enough to attack elephant seals and other marine mammals that flock to beaches. It has reached every continent except Australia.
Ron Foussier, a virologist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said last month: “We have never seen such a large-scale spread of a virus in wild birds, and we have never seen such a large-scale infection in wild mammals. There is no such thing.”
The global outbreak poses a high economic cost for farms, as the virus kills millions of chickens and other poultry. In the wild, the disease can upend ecosystems and push endangered bird species closer to extinction.
Antarctic penguins may not have much immunity to the disease because the virus has never been recorded in Antarctica. Penguin outbreaks in South America and Africa demonstrate their vulnerability. These birds like to waddle together in dense colonies, but aren’t very good at social distancing.
Many Antarctic penguins are already at risk of dying as rising temperatures reduce the amount of sea ice they need to feed, breed and protect themselves. In 2022, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that continental emperor penguins are at risk of extinction due to climate change.
According to CSIC, scientists took samples from the two dead skuas with “the utmost safety measures to prevent the transmission of the virus to humans” and shipped them to the Spanish base on Deception Island for testing. It is said that it was sent by
Bird flu has been creeping towards the continent for months. Other suspected cases of bird flu have occurred in Antarctica in recent weeks. According to the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research. To many scientists, its arrival seemed inevitable.
In October, British scientists found a virus Skuas live on Bird Island in the British territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, about 1,000 miles from Antarctica.And in January, researchers in the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina found influenza A first for gentoo penguins. A further 35 penguins were found dead or showing symptoms of influenza.
