Have you already killed bird flu to hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of penguins in Antarctica?
That's what researchers are trying to find out after a scientific expedition found at least 532 dead Adelie penguins last month, and thousands more are believed to have died, according to a statement from Australia's Federation University.
Although researchers suspect that the deadly H5N1 virus of bird flu killed the penguins, field tests were inconclusive, according to the university. Samples are being sent to laboratories that researchers hope will provide answers in the coming months.
Scientists are specifically concerned that the often deadly H5N1 flu could decimate Endangered Species of penguins and other animals on the remote southern continent.
The disease has spread more aggressively than ever among wildlife since it arrived in South America in 2022 and quickly made its way to Antarctica, where the first case of H5N1 was confirmed in February.
“This has the potential to have a massive impact on wildlife that is already suffering the impact of other things like climate change and other environmental stresses,” said Meagan Dewar, a wildlife biologist at Federation University, who participated. in the last expedition.
Dewar explained to Reuters that dead Adelie penguins were found frozen in sub-zero temperatures and covered in snow on Heroina Island.
Dewar and the small team of researchers could not count all the bodies on the large island, but they estimate that several thousand died in total at some point in the preceding weeks or months.
A colony of about 280,000 Adelia breeds every year on Heroina Island. According to Dewar, when the expedition arrived, the live penguins had already left.
Dewar's excursion did detect the presence of the H5 strain of bird flu on the Antarctic Peninsula and three nearby islands in skua seabirds, predators that feed on penguin eggs and chicks.
According to him British Antarctic SurveyAbout 20 million pairs of penguins breed in Antarctica each year, including emperor penguins, which scientists fear will be nearly extinct by the end of the century as sea ice declines due to climate change.
Emperor penguins could now face the added threat of deadly bird flu “in the spring of next year,” Dewar said.
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