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Yvonne M

27 May 2022

Paul Walton gives an update on the worrying bird flu threat to Scottish seabirds and outlines action needed to protect our precious wildlife.

The loss, to a deadly new strain of Avian Influenza, of 1/3 of the entire Solway barnacle goose population last winter was an unprecedented tragedy. It took us into uncharted territory regarding Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and wild birds. RSPB Scotland staff, with the help of our supporters, reacted quickly and effectively. Since then, we have been watching wetlands, coasts, and other areas where wild birds gather, for signs of any further impacts.

A dead barnacle goose at Mersehead. Image: RSPB Scotland

Seabirds have now become the focus of concern. Late last summer, sick and dead great skuas were found in Shetland, Orkney, the Flannan Isles and St Kilda. Corpses tested positive for HPAI. This happened just prior to migration – the species winters off North and West Africa – so the scale of impact on the population was unclear. Now the skuas, are back and RSPB Scotland is collating data from colonies to assess impacts – but an unexpected and worrying finding is that great skuas are again sick and dying from HPAI. Scotland supports around 60% of the entire world population of this species.

We have also seen HPAI being confirmed in other seabirds, including guillemots, gulls and, more recently, gannets.

Three factors make this development highly significant.

1. Scotland’s seabird populations are of major global significance.
2. They are already under massive pressure from human impacts including climate change, lack of prey fish, deaths through entanglement in fishing gear (known as by-catch) and development pressure – the index of 11 breeding seabirds in Scotland has declined by almost half since the 1986.
3. Many seabirds breed in dense colonies, now risking rapid and devastating spread of HPAI viral infection.

Whilst Avian Influenza circulates in wild birds quite normally, and has for millennia, the new strain of HPAI is a more recent issue and hitting already struggling bird populations. It originated in intensive poultry operations in East Asia, and has now spread into wild birds by two mechanisms: the movement of poultry, poultry products and associated vehicles and equipment; and through the movements and migrations of wild bird populations. It is now recognised by the United Nations  that “Wild birds are victims of HPAI viruses.”

Given the major uncertainties about this new and emerging threat to wildlife, RSPB Scotland is urging the Scottish Government to do all it can to alleviate additional pressures on wild birds affected by HPAI in line with UN recommendations. We are in discussions regarding the development of a national HPAI in Wild Birds Response Plan. This should establish effective HPAI surveillance; biosecurity to safeguard wild bird populations; virus testing and carcass collection; minimising of human disturbance during local outbreaks; coordination with HPAI measures for poultry, gamebird rearing and captive flocks.

These are clear and immediate imperatives. But the most important message is that we must immediately elevate the political priority and funding directed towards the effective conservation of our wild bird species. There is a great deal that we can do for seabirds given the political will: a programme of ecosystem restoration for seabird islands and a lasting biosecurity legacy; an end to fishing for key seabird food species like sandeels; effective monitoring and constructive collaboration with fishing businesses to reduce seabird deaths from by-catch in fishing gear; the provision and maintenance of secure seabird breeding sites and ensuring that the imminent expansion of marine renewables, necessary to help tackle the climate emergency, minimises further harm to nature, and only happens in parallel with measures that restore nature.

If Scotland makes these a reality now, we will build resilience into our seabird populations, making them better able to cope with new human pressures like HPAI. The forthcoming Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and Seabird Conservation Strategy must move beyond rhetoric and deliver real actions at pace that result in positive impacts for our precious wildlife.

Although the risk of contracting the disease from a wild bird is very low, we recommend that people do not handle sick or dead wild birds, remain vigilant, and report dead seabirds, wild waterfowl (swans, geese or ducks), or birds of prey to the UK government Defra helpline (03459 33 55 77). Everyone, at all times but especially now, should take care to maintain good hygiene when feeding garden birds – regularly cleaning feeders outside with mild disinfectant, removing old bird-food, and spacing-out feeders as much as possible.

Main image: Great skua by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)

Despite their reputation, turkeys are highly intelligent birds with unique, under-appreciated evolutionary quirks

By MATTHEW ROZSA

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 25, 2021 7:30PM (EST)

https://www.salon.com/2021/11/25/turkeys-actually-smart/

Turkey with a graduation cap (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

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There is an old myth about turkeys that never seems to die. The basic premise is this: Every time there is a rainstorm, turkeys will turn their heads upward out of curiosity to observe the drops as they fall. Because they are reputed to be unintelligent, the folk tale says the turkeys will remain in this position even after it has become difficult to breath. Eventually, the turkeys will drown. The moral, it seems, is that turkeys are literally too dumb to survive.

While there is exactly zero scientific evidence supporting this belief, it underscores the larger cultural stereotype that turkeys are not very bright. It is hard to blame anyone for reaching this conclusion: Turkeys are, admittedly, a ridiculous-looking (and sounding) animal, with their necks pressed against their bodies, their ungraceful gaits and their “gobble gobble”-sounding cluck.

Yet if you want to feel less guilty about chowing down on a juicy gravy-covered drumstick on Thanksgiving, you can’t use the premise of turkey stupidity to do so. The science makes it clear that turkeys are actually pretty smart.

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“Turkeys probably can’t do multivariable calculus or explain string theory, but then neither can most people I know (me included),” Christopher Elphick, an ornithologist at the University of Connecticut, told Salon by email. “At one level, any organism that can survive and thrive in a constantly changing environment that they have little control over, as turkeys often do, must be doing something right.”

Elphick’s observation about surviving and thriving while one’s environment changes is crucial. When measuring intelligence, cognitive scientists emphasize an organism’s ability to effective adapt to its surroundings, not human-centric activities like reading a book or solving an algebraic equation. In other words, it is a mistake to dismiss turkeys as “stupid” because they can’t do tasks that humans must perform — but it would be rational to draw that conclusion if, for instance, they did indeed drown themselves whenever it rained. Yet turkeys have proved quite adept at surviving amid changing conditions, perhaps more so than a bipedal species that is currently overheating the planet.

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Alan Krakauer from the University of California–Davis expressed a similar point about turkeys’ versatility.

“Turkeys may not have the problem solving skills of crows and ravens, but I’m reluctant to call them stupid,” Krakauer wrote to Salon. “They can survive in all sorts of habitats, including cities, and make use of a huge range of different types of food. They have to do all this while navigating a complex social world. Turkey hunters will be quick to tell you how wary they can be during hunting season.”

That said, if you’ve ever seen a squashed turkey as roadkill, you’ll know that turkeys struggle with manmade environmental changes completely outside their sphere of understanding. This speaks not to “stupidity,” but the simple fact that wild turkeys had no reason to ever need to comprehend something as complex as traffic.

Of course, domesticated turkeys aren’t necessarily more intelligent for the experience. As Krakauer put it, there is a “night and day” difference between wild and domesticated turkey intelligence. Wild turkeys live in large ranges where older birds teach the younger ones how to flourish with a wild, unfettered lifestyle. Domesticated turkeys, by contrast, are stuffed into crowded quarters and bred to be docile.

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“Many of the early wild turkey management projects failed because they used genetically wild turkeys that were raised on farms and then released, and these weren’t able to gain enough survival skills to make it,” Krakauer recalled. “Wildlife biologists realized they had to catch already savvy wild adults and move them so the new stock would have those wild behaviors to pass along.”

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One of those wild behaviors is the ability to form complex social structures. In this respect, wild turkeys are not dissimilar from humans. They both crave interactions and approval from other members of their species, and they rely on building teams in order to achieve immediate day-to-day needs.

These traits are not limited to merely forming rudimentary groups; turkeys have sophisticated social structures that they rigorously enforce.

“Males and females form separate flocks during the non-breeding season,” Elphick explained. “Within these flocks there are well defined social hierarchies – usually pretty stable in the female flocks, less so in the male flocks.” Elphick noted that this hierarchical behavior in poultry is where humans get the concept of a “pecking order.”

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Turkeys seem to embrace their various roles based not just on their relevant physical characteristic (size, speed, and so on), but also on their “personalities.” As Elphick pointed out, researchers are finding more and more evidence that individuals in various bird species have “personalities” of their own. As one example, some individuals in a species will be more or less likely to take risks, such as visiting a bird feeder when a human being is close by.

“Turkeys can certainly learn that it is safe to come in to feeders, and I have friends who have birds show up at a regular time every day as though they are ready to have the feeders filled – a sign of intelligence,” Elphick observed.

Krakauer also gave an example of turkey intelligence that involves a characteristic one does not usually associate with birds — putting one’s immediate self-interest aside in favor of the long view. Reflecting on male turkey behavior during mating season, Krakauer described how turkeys who are brothers or half-brothers “sometimes form teams to cooperatively court and defend females.” Their strategy is to make sure that a turkey hen breeds with a victorious member of their group; even though only one of them gets to breed, “the others benefit by passing on more of their genes through their successful brother than they would if they tried to go it alone.”

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Does this mean that one shouldn’t eat turkeys during Thanksgiving? Obviously this is a matter of personal preference — Krakauer said that he still enjoys eating turkey, while Elphick is a vegetarian — but, at the very least, it is illogical to do so on the grounds that turkeys are somehow too stupid to have lives that even matter. As Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wrote to Salon, “wild turkeys are smart enough to find their way, to avoid many predators, to diligently protect their brood, to find food in the forest, and can fly up to 55 miles per hour and run up to 25 miles per hour. They haven’t a house with plumbing but they keep themselves impeccably clean by taking dust baths and preening their feathers meticulously.”

In other words, turkeys are definitely more complex than the Thanksgiving-friendly stereotype would want you to admit.

William McGee, Zenger News – ThursdayFollow

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• https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/how-climate-change-could-release-world-ending-super-bacteria/ar-AAXLyp5?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=05010eb2adaa4ea8becf04f28f65b9b6

Strains of a “superpower” bacteria that could cause the world’s next deadly pandemic have been discovered by scientists in Antarctica.

Researchers found that the bacteria have a built-in resistance to antibiotics that could make current treatments useless.

The Chilean researchers made the discovery during research into how climate change could affect the spread of bacteria that had been frozen in ice for thousands of years.

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They warned that climate change means the bacteria will have the potential to spread beyond polar regions, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Researcher Andres Marcoleta of the University of Chile headed the study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment in March.

He said mobile DNA fragments contain “superpowers” that evolved to resist extreme conditions and can easily be transferred to other bacteria.

Marcoleta said: “We know that the soils of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the polar areas most impacted by melting ice, host a great diversity of bacteria, and that some of them constitute a potential source of ancestral genes that confer resistance to antibiotics.”

University researchers collected a number of samples from the Antarctic Peninsula between 2017 and 2019.

They were astonished to find that many of the bacteria were practically indestructible.

Samples had surprising adaptations and capabilities that included being highly resistant to the effect of multiple classes of antibiotics and other toxic substances.

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The researchers found that Pseudomonas bacteria – one of the predominant groups of bacteria in the peninsula – are not pathogenic but can be a source of “resistance genes,” which are not stopped by common disinfectants like copper, chlorine or quaternary ammonium.

They also found that Polaromonas bacteria – also predominant in polar environments – have the “potential to inactivate beta-lactam type antibiotics, which are essential for the treatment of different infections,” according to Marcoleta.

© University of Chile/ZengerA scientist from the University of Chile collects organic material looking for a bacteria discovered in Antarctica, January 13, 2019. University of Chile/Zenger

The researcher said: “It is worth asking whether climate change could have an impact on the occurrence of infectious diseases.

“In a possible scenario, these genes could leave this reservoir and promote the emergence and proliferation of infectious diseases.”

Marcoleta warned: “The idea that these genes could eventually reach bacteria that cause infections in humans or other animals, giving them greater resistance capabilities, does not seem unreasonable.”

He said that the findings should urge the scientific world to anticipate the emergence of possible new resistance mechanisms in infectious diseases and guide the design of new antibiotics.

He added, however, that some properties of these bacteria could also have other important biotechnological applications.

The researcher said that the COVID-19 pandemic “has taught us that microorganisms, and in particular pathogens, can cause effects with global reach. In this sense, it is worth asking if climate change could have an impact on the occurrence of infectious diseases.”

The melting of the North and South Poles is one of the most well-known immediate consequences of climate change.

The research will continue and may be taken much further in a new larger-scale research project named “Anillo mBioClim.”

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.