Bird flu isnt just lurking inside cows, new research shows.
The report waspublishedFriday in the Nature journal Communications Biology.
According to the paper, the flu-infected dolphin was first identified on March 29, 2022.
A pod of bottlenose dolphins.Image: Anita Kainrath (Shutterstock)
By the time they arrived, however, the dolphin had already died.
It was subsequently packed in ice and taken to the university for an autopsy the following day.
Testing then revealed the presence of H5N1 within the dolphins lungs and brain.
The current outbreaks ofH5N1 bird flu in cows, for instance, have caused generally mild illness to date.
But strains belonging to this particular lineage of H5N1 (2.3.4.4b) have been deadly to marine mammals.
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No further cases have been detected yet.
