Gharials are dying from a mysterious disease.
I have been meaning to talk a bit about this one for a few days now. Getting around to doing this blog has been a bit of a hassle for me. I’m still not quite used to the whole “update often” format.Anywho, it appears that a group of gharials in a river sanctuary in India were dying from some enigmatic disease. Whatever the pathogen was/is, it appears to affect the liver and kidneys. So, the pathogen seems blood based then. Current thoughts seem to focus on pollution from the nearby Yamuna river. The animals may have eaten some badly contaminated fish.The end result has been the unfortunate demise of 50 animals so far. Given the critically endangered status of
Gavialis gangeticus (they only live in India), setbacks like these are always a big deal. Hopefully this will turn out to be a localized event, and not a contagion.
~ Jura
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