Plagues
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Bizarro Earth

US: Mystery Grows As More Livestock Dies In Maury County


Disclose.tv
Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:01 UTC
Horse
© News Channel5.com

Tennessee -- Horses are dying and now cattle as well and detectives in Maury County have been at a loss to explain how or why it is happening. First, seven seemingly healthy horses turned up dead last week at a Hampshire farm in Maury County. The state performed a necropsy and released the results.

"They ruled that it's undetermined. The cause of death cannot be determined at this time. It is a mystery. We don't know what happened," said Detective Terry Chandler with the Maury County Sheriff's Department.

Now Detective Chandler is investigating more deaths: Two dead cows at a farm across from the one where the seven horses were found. And he's consulting with police looking into more mysterious horse deaths in Dickson and Giles county.

Chandler said there is no evidence anyone is intentionally harming the animals.

He said they have not ruled out the possibility the livestock died from eating contaminated hay or a poison plant. It's possible the toxins were not detected by the state testing.
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Attention

UK: Incurable Virus Killing Thousands Of Lambs


Sky News, UK
Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:16 UTC
Baby Lambs
© MySparrowNest Blogspot
A new virus is causing lambs to be born with deformities so severe that they die within seconds.

It is thought midges brought the Schmallenberg virus to Britain from continental Europe last autumn.

The foetuses of newly-pregnant ewes bitten by the insects often fail to develop properly.

At Mayfield Farm near Mildenhall in Suffolk, 75 of the 1,700 lambs born so far this year were affected.

"In a ewe that was carrying twins, she would have a job lambing it. You would have to pull it out," said farmer Clive Sleightholme.

"The legs were fused together and tucked underneath, its head was angular, not formed properly.

"They had undershot jaws and they weren't fleshed out properly but nearly every one was alive when it was pulled out but only lived seconds up to a minute."

The Schmallenberg virus, which is not thought to cause risk to humans, was first identified in Germany in November. There have also been cases in Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
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X

Mystery disease kills 100 in Uganda


Zeenews
Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:38 UTC
Image
© Unknown
A mystery disease has killed over 100 people and infected more than 2,000 in northern Uganda.

The disease, first reported in September 2009, has since been dubbed "nodding disease" as it leaves its victims nodding, Xinhua reported.

Spread over the region's five districts, the disease is characterised by head nodding, mental retardation and stunted growth and affects children and young adults. It causes young children and adolescents to nod violently while eating.

Scientists are to launch a series of investigations as the previous efforts couldn't identify the disease's cause.
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Ladybug

US: Northern Plains hit hard by deer-killing disease

Matthew Brown
Associated Press
Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:00 UTC
Billings, Montana- White-tailed deer populations in parts of eastern Montana and elsewhere in the Northern Plains could take years to recover from a devastating disease that killed thousands of the animals in recent months, wildlife officials and hunting outfitters said.

In northeast Montana, officials said 90 percent or more of whitetail have been killed along a 100-mile stretch of the Milk River from Malta to east of Glasgow. Whitetail deaths also have been reported along the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in western North Dakota and eastern Montana and scattered sites in Wyoming, South Dakota and eastern Kansas.
Image
© Scott Charlesworth/Purdue UniversityBiting midge life cycle.
The deaths are being attributed to an outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD. Transmitted by biting midges, EHD causes internal bleeding that can kill infected animals within just a few days.

"I've been here 21 years and it was worse than any of us here have seen," said Pat Gunderson, the Glasgow-based regional supervisor for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "Right now it's going to take a few years to get things back to even a moderate population."
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Health

Mysterious Disease Hits Uganda

Geof Magga
The Africa Report
Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:48 UTC
Map of Uganda
© n/aMap of Uganda
As Ugandans celebrated Christmas and New Year, most people in the northern parts of the country were seeking answers about a mysterious disease that has mainly affected children.

The head nodding disease which mostly attacks children aged between five and 15 has killed over 50 children in the last three months alone.

"The major symptom of the disease is the continuous nodding of the head" said community officer Jacob Okello.



"Over 2400 children in the districts of northern Uganda are suffering from the disease.

"Some of the victims faint after several minutes from the continuous head nodding".



There are fears that the little known disease might escalate into an outbreak amid admissions by authorities that they have no knowledge of the ailment.
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Blackbox

Queensland: Mysterious disease killing marine life in Gladstone Harbour?


ABC News
Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:10 UTC
An unprecedented number of fish with red spots, lesions and parasites, as well as dead dugongs and turtles, have been found this year.

Fishermen and conservationists blame the state of the marine life on dredging to widen Gladstone Harbour to accommodate carrier ships servicing the booming liquefied natural gas and coal seam gas industries.
Image
© Trevor FalzonA bull shark with red marks on it caught in the Calliope River, Gladstone in October.
But the Gladstone Port Corporation does not believe the dredging is causing the disease in fish, and authorities say last year's wet summer may be a factor in the poor health of the harbour.

Water testing shows a number of sites within the harbour exceeded national guidelines for aluminium, copper and chromium. Experts say the levels pose a minimal risk to marine life; however, the Queensland Government has appointed an independent scientific panel to conduct more research.

View a gallery of photos of diseased marine life found in Gladstone waters, interspersed with quotes from local fishermen and stakeholders.
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Bizarro Earth

Researcher Links Fungus To Dropping Bat Population


redOrbit
Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:25 UTC
Bats
© redOrbit
A University of Tennessee researcher helped confirm the link between the fungus Geomyces destructans and the dropping bat population.

Over a million bats were killed in North American in 2006, and little has been done to try and save them due to lack of evidence for the alleged killer.

However, a new study has discovered that the fungus Geomyces destructans is the agent of White-noise Syndrome (WNS), which is the fungal disease decimating the bat population.

The fungus has been thought to be the likely culprit because the skin lesions found on the bats are associated with colonization of the fungus.

"Many assumed that fungal infections in mammals only occur if some other pathogen has already weakened the immune system," Justin Boyles, a post-doctoral research associate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said in a statement. "Additionally, the recent discovery that G. destructans commonly colonizes the skin of bats in Europe with no major die-offs generated speculation that other unidentified factors are the primary cause of WNS."
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Info

Canada: A Mysterious Virus Threatens Salmon in the West


The Atlantic Wire
Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
A virus that devastated farm-raised salmon populations in the Atlantic may be appearing among wild fish in the Pacific, a potentially devastating threat to fisheries there.

Scientists reported on Friday that the virus, infectious salmon anemia, had been found for the second time among wild salmon in British Columbia. That could suggest that the disease, now found among farmed salmon in Atlantic waters, has made the jump to wild fish populations, The New York Times reports.

There is no cure.
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Bug

US: Knot of Worry Tightens for Fishermen as Infectious Salmon Anemia Spreads

William Yardley
New York Times
Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:47 UTC
salmon fishing
© Matthew Ryan Williams/NYTSean O'Donnell worked on the nets in Seattle after salmon fishing Wednesday.
Seattle - The scientist in Canada got the results from a respected lab and held a news conference. The ice and bait man at a fish processor in Sitka, Alaska, heard the news on Facebook. Vardon Tremain read it in the newspaper while working on his trolling boat docked here in Salmon Bay.

More scientists in Washington started talking, and 24 hours later everyone is asking more questions. As word spread that infectious salmon anemia, a deadly virus that has devastated farmed fish in Chile, had been found for the first time in prized wild Pacific salmon, there remained much uncertainty about the finding and what its potential impact could be.

So far it has been found in just two wild sockeye salmon in British Columbia and not in an active state. Nevertheless the reaction from fishermen has echoed that of some scientists: this is the last thing salmon need.

"On top of everything else, that would just be murder here," said Mr. Tremain, aboard his 40-foot boat, Heidi, at Fishermen's Terminal here.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Mysterious Disease Killed Scores of Seals in Alaska

Yereth Rosen
Reuters
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:56 UTC
Diseased Seal
© Reuters/North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management/HandoutA diseased ringed seal in Alaska is shown in this handout photo released to Reuters October 13, 2011.
A mysterious disease, possibly a virus, has killed scores of ring seals along Alaska's coast, according to local and federal agencies.

The diseased seals have been beaching themselves on the Arctic coastline since July, with numbers picking up in subsequent months, biologists with the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management and other agencies said on Thursday.

About 100 of the diseased animals have been found near Barrow, the nation's northernmost community, and half of those have died, the borough biologists reported.

Elsewhere in the sprawling borough, villagers have reported 146 ringed seals hauling themselves onto beaches, and many of those were diseased, the biologists said.

Ringed seals rarely come ashore, spending most of the year in the water or on floating ice, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service.
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