The bird influenza wave that’s left around 60 million chickens and turkeys dead across the country can likewise contaminate and eliminate animals like cats and dogs, in addition to other mammals.
Six cats have actually passed away in Nebraska, Wyoming and Oregon and a minimum of one dog in Canada. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports 170 mammals have actually gotten the illness throughout the latest break out, mainly wild foxes and skunks.
Cases are incredibly unusual however can be deadly.
“I think maybe we were waiting for this moment to happen,” said Nichola Hill, an ecologist at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “There have been documented cases in domestic cats and dogs now that have been linked to predation on dead birds, as tends to be the habit of dogs and cats. They’re predators too.”
Hill said keeping animals far from wildlife is the very best method to secure them.
“This is a real call to action that we’re seeing this so close to home,” she said. “If you’re walking your dog, keep them on a leash. I have an indoor cat – I love cats, but I also love birds, and so I just keep them in different spaces.”
U.S. Department of Agriculture
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Sarah Sillman research studies animal illness and examined the 3 contaminated cats in Nebraska at the state’s veterinary diagnostic center.
The cats lived on rural farm acreages and likely ate birds contaminated with the illness, rapidly ending up being sluggish and establishing breathing issues and gunky eyes.
The owners and vets were stressed they’d been exposed to a toxic substance like rat toxin, till biopsies revealed the existence of bird influenza.
Sillman said the illness likewise triggers neurological damage that made it tough for the cats to move as they experienced tremblings, seizures and difficulty walking.
“It’s a pretty significant disease for the cats that are affected. All the cases that I’ve encountered have been fatal,” she said. “But there’s millions of cats in the United States, and we only have a handful of confirmed cases. It’s very rare.”
It’s even rarer for the illness to pass to human beings, according to poultry vet David Swayne. Since 1997, Swayne said there have actually been 874 reported cases of human beings contracting the illness. Symptoms are normally flu-like, however about 40% of those cases have actually been deadly.
“Something that helps me sleep at night is that this virus is watched very closely by public health agencies around the globe,” he said. “And to this point, the virus has not passed a threshold of being transmissible human to human. In 20 years of watching, it hasn’t happened.”
This story was produced in collaboration with Harvest Public Media, a partnership of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, farming and rural concerns.
