A polar bear in the Arctic, red foxes in Europe, penguins in Antarctica, and a wide range of other wild animals have been infected with the flu virus strain, which is currently spreading in dairy cattle in the U.S.
Up to 75% of new and emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals, and most of those can be traced back to wildlife. Monitoring wild animals for diseases can help scientists identify emerging health threats.
Government agencies in the U.S. and worldwide monitor wild birds for avian influenza, which spreads in bird populations without causing symptoms, and select animals for other pathogens.
But overall, there is “very little surveillance of wildlife for any diseases,” says Thomas Gillespie, a disease ecologist at Emory University.An exception is animals that are commercially important, like deer that people pay to hunt. In 2020, outbreaks of avian flu in farmed poultry and wild birds started to increase […]
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