• News
• National
• Hundreds of thousands of free-range hens locked down after bird flu found in NZ

AuthorTom Rose,Publish DateMon, 20 Jul 2026, 11:45am

New Zealand’s largest egg supplier is putting hundreds of thousands of free-range chickens into lockdown after the deadly bird flu virus was detected in the country for the first time.

Mainland Poultry, which supplies nearly 40% of the country’s eggs, has taken the precautionary step of isolating more than half a million free-range laying hens while officials work out the extent of the disease’s spread.

While there have been zero cases of bird flu identified in commercial poultry flocks, and meat and eggs remain safe to eat, chief executive John McKay said the two detected in wild birds for the first time last week had prompted them to try to mitigate the risks.

McKay, who is also the chair of the Egg Producers Federation (EPF), told Ryan Bridge TODAY the nationwide agribusiness had just over 1.3 million hens, with around 550,000 of those farmed as free-range.

Free-range hens are usually given the freedom to spend much of their day outside and can interact with other wildlife, so McKay said Mainland Poultry staff had a “pretty busy weekend” closing off the pop holes in barns until more is known.

“The birds naturally come in in the evening. They come in to roost and have their final feed before they go to sleep,” McKay said.

Mainland Poultry has isolated over 550,000 free-range hens as a precautionary measure after New Zealand’s first two cases of the H5N1 bird flu strain were detected last week. Photo / 123rf

“In the morning, [the pop holes] aren’t opened as per usual … so the birds are temporarily housed inside those barns for their welfare.”

McKay said free-range eggs made up about 45% of New Zealand’s total egg market, so there was clear consumer demand.

Mainland Poultry would continue to maintain good on-farm biosecurity, even ramping up some measures, as McKay said it was crucial for protecting their hens and businesses.

“Obviously, we care deeply about our birds,” McKay said.

“Let’s better understand the risk, understand where it might have spread or where it hasn’t spread, and then based on better understanding that risk, we can then make good decisions about what we do with those birds going forward.”

New Zealand’s first known case of the H5N1 strain was recorded on Wednesday in a wild brown skua found on Lower Hutt’s Petone Beach, with a second detection in a native kāhu, or swamp harrier, in the Wairarapa announced Friday.

In an update yesterday, MPI’s chief veterinary officer Dr Mary van Andel said no new cases of bird flu had been found since, but they had received a surge in reports about dead or sick birds since the public notification and would be continuing to investigate each one.

Authorities hadn’t found any evidence of widespread transmission or mass mortality affecting wildlife either, she added.

“We have staff on the ground over the weekend carrying out checks in some areas of Wellington’s south coast and Wairarapa,” van Andel said.

“We continue to have a strong response from the public about unwell or dead birds they have seen, and we consider every notification and triage any suspected cases of avian influenza.”

Van Andel urged people not to touch or move the birds they encounter.

“If you see three or more sick or dead wild birds in a group, report it immediately to the exotic pest and disease hotline on 0800 80 99 66 from anywhere in New Zealand or online at report.mpi.govt.nz.”

The synchronicity suggests something deeper than mere play—a glimpse into how social bonds form through the body rather than the mind.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Editorial process

Published July 19, 2026

Elephants at play do more than chase, spar and wrestle with their trunks. In a study of African savannah elephants, a player that saw a companion perform a distinctive trunk or head movement became more likely to reproduce that exact movement within the next second.

The researchers call this rapid motor mimicry. Its closest familiar comparison is the way a smile can pull another face into a smile, or one person’s laughter can make others join in before anyone has consciously decided to copy it.

This is one study, not settled consensus. It observed a single captive group in Spain, and its results do not show that elephants laugh, smile or necessarily share a human-like emotional experience. What it documents is narrower: tightly timed matching of bodily play signals.

Five movements and a one-second window

The study, led by Giada Cordoni of the University of Turin and published in Scientific Reports in May 2025, followed 15 African savannah elephants at Parque de la Naturaleza de Cabárceno in Cantabria. The group lived in a 25-hectare outdoor area and included six immature animals, two late adolescents and seven adults.

From 91 hours of footage collected between April and July 2022, the team extracted 30 hours of two-elephant social play covering 188 sessions. Trained coders examined the video frame by frame or in slow motion, achieving what the authors classified as good inter-observer agreement.

They focused on five conspicuous play movements. One was a forward trunk swing towards a partner. Another held the trunk upright in a curved “periscope”. The list also included resting an S-shaped trunk against the forehead in a “circus pose”, flopping the trunk onto the head, and waggling the head from side to side.

When one elephant performed a target movement, it was labelled the trigger. The playmate counted as a responder if it began the same movement within one second. The researchers compared that response with a matched moment in the same session, at least 10 seconds away, when the trigger had not just performed one of the movements.

Copying the same move, not merely moving

The matched comparison is essential. Two excited elephants may move vigorously at the same time because both are already playing. Shared activity alone does not establish mimicry.

Responders were significantly more likely to reproduce the same target movement after seeing it than during the control moment. They were not significantly more likely to perform a different target movement. This specificity supports the interpretation that they were matching the displayed action rather than merely becoming more active.

Only eight elephants had been exposed to at least one target movement in the circumstances required for that core test. The result therefore comes from a small number of individuals, even though the observational dataset covered the full 15-member group. The statistical comparison was exact and within-session, but it does not turn eight animals into a species-wide finding.

Editors’ Recommendations

The human gut contains roughly 500 million neurons wired directly to the brain via the vagus nerve — and it registers signals before conscious thought catches upNeuroscience suggests overthinking isn’t solved by more thinking — it’s interrupted by the body, because the vagus nerve carries roughly 80% of its signals upward from gut to brain, not the other way aroundSilicon CanalsIn 1977, NASA launched two probes designed to last five years. Voyager 1 and 2 are now the only human-made objects in interstellar space, still operating, still transmitting, funded by a team of engineers some of whom have worked on the mission for nearly 50 years

Play becomes contagious at two different speeds

The same group had previously been observed for a 2024 study of play contagion. In that analysis, an uninvolved elephant was more likely to begin playing within three minutes after seeing others play than during a matched control period. Contagion occurred mostly within 30 metres and was strongest between animals that affiliated more often.

Rapid motor mimicry operates on a different scale. It happens inside an existing play bout, between current partners, in less than a second. Behavioural contagion describes an observer joining the general activity without necessarily copying its exact movement. One is a near-instant echo inside the game; the other is the game spreading through the group.

The elephants most central in the rapid-mimicry network also tended to be the ones most likely to catch the broader urge to play. The reported correlation was strong, but it cannot reveal what the animals felt. It shows that two forms of behavioural matching were related in this particular group.

The rougher the play, the more useful a signal may become

The copied movements appeared around more offensive forms of play than target movements that went unanswered. The researchers recorded 48 transitions around mimicry events and 108 around movements that were not copied. Mimicry was often preceded and followed by sparring, and was also preceded by chasing.

That pattern suggests a possible function. Fast matching may help partners coordinate vigorous play and signal that a push, chase or trunk slap still belongs to the game. In rough-and-tumble play, the difference between competition and conflict depends partly on both animals continuing to read the exchange in the same way.

Editors’ Recommendations

We treat daydreaming as a lapse in focus, but neuroscientists tracking the brain’s default mode network found that a wandering mind lights up the same circuits used for planning the future and solving problems left unattendedWe picture loneliness as an old person’s burden, yet a global 2023 survey found this may not be the case: across 142 countries, adults aged 19 to 29 reported the most loneliness of any age group, more than a quarter of themSilicon CanalsResearchers tested an engineered enzyme on donated skin tissue and brought its chemical aging markers down to levels typically seen in 31-year-old skin, a separate test on a 75-year-old donor’s arteries cut the same damage by more than seventy percent

This interpretation remains a hypothesis. Mimicry was not associated with longer play sessions, unlike findings reported in some primates and dogs. It may help regulate a difficult moment without extending the whole interaction. The study did not test whether preventing mimicry caused play to break down or aggression to increase.

The comparison with contagious smiles and laughter

In humans, rapid facial matching can begin within fractions of a second. Smiles recruit facial responses, while hearing or seeing laughter can elicit laughter and smiling in an observer. An independent experimental study of human participants found that audio-visual laughter was the most reliable trigger, with sound particularly important for laughter contagion.

Comparable rapid matching of play faces has been described in great apes, monkeys, dogs, meerkats and sun bears. Across those species, researchers usually study an open-mouth play face. Elephants present a different anatomical problem.

The elephant trunk combines the nose and upper lip, and its motor control is connected with other parts of the face. An open mouth is not a clean play-only signal because elephants also use it during vocalisation and conflict. Cordoni’s team therefore examined trunk and head movements that function as recognisable markers of elephant play.

The resemblance to contagious laughter lies in the rapid matching and possible coordinating role, not in the outward expression. A raised trunk is not an elephant smile. Nor does a shared timing threshold prove that the underlying neural process or felt emotion is identical across species.