- Britain's sparrows and starlings are dying from an unknown
disease. While tests have ruled out West Nile virus, which is transmitted
by mosquitoes and has killed several people in the US this year, researchers
have no idea what is to blame or if humans could be affected.
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- Ornithologists in Scotland have reported several cases
of a strange neurological condition since 1994. Young birds with the disease
can't fly, instead walking round in tight circles, doing somersaults and
twisting their heads bizarrely.
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- Now the swollen brains of birds that died of the disease
have been analysed for the first time, because of fears it might be West
Nile.
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- "I'm glad to say it wasn't that or any of the related
viruses," says Tom Pennycott of the Scottish Agricultural College's
Veterinary Science Division in Ayr. But so far his team has drawn a complete
blank when it comes to identifying the disease.
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- Less food
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- Conservationists were already concerned about the widespread
decline in the numbers of sparrows and starlings across Britain.
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- But the mystery disease is unlikely to be the cause,
because the only cases so far have been in Scotland. "We've not found
an answer to the decline, but we've found a new mystery," says Pennycott.
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- "We're not talking big numbers, but it's certainly
there and it might be the tip of the iceberg," he adds.
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- Pennycott may have found other clues about the cause
of the decline. In work not yet published, he found the salmonella food-poisoning
bacteria in two-thirds of the dead sparrows brought to him.
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- A paper in this week's Nature, however, blames the decline
on changes in farming practices that mean there's less food for birds in
winter.
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- http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992727
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