Three years ago, dozens of African elephants mysteriously died in Zimbabwe. Now scientists have confirmed their killer: a rare and little-known bacterium that can cause organ inflammation leading to deadly hemorrhaging.
It’s still unclear how Zimbabwe’s elephants became infected, say Laura Rosen and her colleagues. Rosen is an epidemiologist at the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area’s Animal Health Sub-Working Group in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. But the results do solve one part of a mystery that has haunted efforts to protect the region’s African elephants (Loxodonta Africana), which are endangered, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
From August to November 2020, 35 elephants were found dead in northwestern Zimbabwe. In neighboring Botswana, as many as 350 elephants suddenly died the same year. The Botswana elephants’ deaths have been attributed to cyanobacteria (SN: 5/14/21).
But there is no evidence implicating cyanobacteria in the deaths of Zimbabwe’s elephants, the researchers say. Nor is their evidence anthrax, another suspected killer, is to blame: Other animals would have been affected, and the corpses lacked telltale symptoms.
2023-11-07 07:00:00
Original from www.sciencenews.org