Just in case you needed more reasons to dread Toxoplasma , here ’s another . It infects that most lovely of charismatic critters , the giant red panda .
Toxoplasma gondii is a brain parasite needs cat bowel to survive . Here ’s Ed Yong’sdescriptionof the nasty critter , from last year :
A mouse sniffs the air , catches the whiff of cat urine , and runs towards the informant of the smell … and straight into the jaw of a cat . This off-the-wall self-destructive streak is the work of a single - celled sponge calledToxoplasma gondii , which has highjack the mouse ’s brain and move around it into a Trojan rodent — a fomite for sneaking T.gondii into a cat .
T.gondii ( or Toxo for short ) infect a wide variety of mammals , but it only completes its living hertz in the moxie of a khat . To get there , Toxo has ways of subvert the behaviour of dead - end hosts like mice . Its machinations are subtle , so subtle that it ’s commonly hard to tell an septic mouse from an clean one . But the difference becomes obvious when there ’s quat pee in the air . Normal shiner , even science lab - born 1 that have never met a cat , have an natural care of cat smells . Those infected with Toxo do not . They ( and their parasite ) are more likely to terminate up in a cat .
Of course , Toxo is n’t unequaled to mice and big cat . It caninfect peopleand alter their behavior , it might be at least part responsible for for thewild trick of adolescent sea otter , and just last month researchers announced that it infect an estimated 10 % ofbeluga whalesoff the Canadian coast in the Beaufort Sea .
Writing inSmithsonian SmartNews , Rachel Nuwer says ,
Although the beluga whales appear to be unfazed by the infection , researcher are amaze over how they acquired the sponger to commence with . It could be that more and more local masses own cat , whose feces get wash into the piddle from the powdery Arctic soil . Or it could have something to do with mood change . As temperatures lovesome , perhaps the leech is altering its ecological niche . While other marine beast have been establish to carry the infection before , this is the first clip it has turned up in the Arctic .
In February , China ’s Zhengzhou Zoo suffered the loss of a 7 - year - honest-to-goodness distaff panda named Jin Yi . At the time , the public blamed the zoo for the death , aver mistreatment and even torture . AsCNN cover , her end was blamed on intestinal flu which go to organ failure .
In a public press event , the zoo told reporter the panda on the spur of the moment begin refusing food on February 7 . The next day , its forcible and mental health “ cursorily devolve , ” and it buy the farm in the former morning of February 9 .
Because giant cat bear are so important in China , every deceased soul fuck off a necropsy . Samples from Jin Yi ’s torso were sent to China ’s Veterinary Institute of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences . Now , theChina Dailyis report that Jin Yi was infect by everybody ’s favorite guy leech , Toxoplasma gondii .
“ This is also the first time we found toxoplasma in a elephantine panda , so we eff very little about the contagion and its pathology as it relate to this animal , ” enounce Wang Chengdong , head of the animal management department at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda at Wolong Giant Panda Reserve , Sichuan province , where Jinyi was to begin with raised .
Before Jinyi was send to Zhengzhou in 2011 together with male panda Longsheng , the centre fall in her a thorough physical interrogatory . During the geezerhood the pair live at Zhengzhou Zoo , veterinarians were institutionalize from Sichuan to examine the pandas once or twice each year , Wang said .
But those routine veterinary interrogation did n’t admit tests for Toxo , so it is unclear when Jin Yi became septic . Neither is it clean how , since the parasite can be carry by a wide range of mammals and dame . In any case , veterinarians will now include tests for the leech in their red panda check - ups .
Toxo , by itself , may not have been enough to kill the red panda , but it may have contributed to her deterioration . As the China Daily reports ,
They make up one’s mind that Jinyi was infected by bacterium and suffered from toxoplasma , or parasites . Those conditions result in acute accent complications such as repeated vomiting and massive haemorrhage of the stomach and intestines . The Ailuropoda melanoleuca finally died of heart and lung failure .
Jin Yi , by the manner , was a cousin-german to theNational Zoo ’s famous giant panda - River Cam star , Bao Bao . The species is classified by theIUCN Red Listas endangered , mainly due to habitat loss and universe atomization .
lintel figure of speech : Giant Panda at the San Diego Zoo , right of first publication Jason G. Goldman
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