Scientist Melissa Miller was seeing something in California sea otters that she had not seen before: an unusually severe form of toxoplasmosis, which officials have confirmed has killed at least four of the animals.
"We wanted to get the word out. We're seeing something we haven't seen before, we want people to know about it and we want people working on marine mammals to be aware of these weird findings," said Miller, a wildlife veterinarian specialist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW). "Take extra precautions."
In March, a study from the DFW and the University of California, Davis, revealed that a rare strain of the parasite, never before reported in aquatic animals, was tied to the deaths of four sea otters. The strain, first seen in Canadian mountain lions in 1995, had not been previously detected on the California coast."This was a complete surprise," Karen Shapiro, with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said in a statement. "The COUG [toxoplasma strain] genotype has never before been described in sea otters, nor anywhere in the California coastal environment or in any other aquatic mammal or bird."
[...] Toxoplasma is often found in cat feces. Otters, which live along the shoreline, can be exposed to the parasite in rainwater runoff—all four cases scientists studied came in during the heavy rainfall season.
Toxoplasmosis infection is common in sea otters—which have a roughly 60 percent chance of being infected in their lifetimes, Miller said—and can be fatal, but this strain is of particular concern.
However, Miller warned against unfairly demonizing cats.
"I don't want this to be a war on cats," she said. "I have two cats. What I try to do is practice what I preach and what I know as a scientist: I keep my cats indoors all the time and I make sure to dispose of their litter into something that will not leak into the environment."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gtomorrow on Friday April 14, @08:30AM (5 children)
...on the provenence of this strain of Toxoplasmosis (Cmd-C, Cmd-V), one phrase from TFS sticks in my mind, moderate me "off-topic" if you must...
I have to ask: where? Does Dr. Miller personally escort her leak-proof drums of spent litter and cat feces to, say, the bowels of some nearby salt mine? Maybe the neighborhood radioactive waste collection site? Does she have a deal with SpaceX? Sorry for all the snark, but where is this magical place on Earth that the cat litter (and hence, Toxoplasmosis) the does not eventually leak into the environment?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14, @10:08AM
He swallows them and puts maxi-pads all around him and duct-tape around that (because he does leak, esp. badly through his mouth).
(Score: 2) by EJ on Friday April 14, @11:54AM (1 child)
Incinerator?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday April 14, @02:08PM
> Incinerator?
This is what I was thinking. It's the only way to be sure. That said I don't think it would be very good if every cat owner started to have a burn-barrel at home. So it kind of matters how your garbage is collected and dealt with, landfill (bad) or incineration (better?). Not sure what they do with garbage out in California (except put it on TV).
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday April 14, @08:16PM
Aren't cats, you know, animals? And if they were stray and in the environment, wouldn't they poop in the environment? Maybe she's got some special gene-modified amphibious cat that poops and disseminates toxoplasma into its aquatic environment, in which case, they'd probably look a little like sea otters [purrmaids.com]. That's it! They're cross-breeding!
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday April 15, @06:28AM
Further, the largest reservoir of Toxoplasma worldwide is...
Humans, with about half the world's population infected.
Most mammals can carry some variety thereof.
Cats are a concern to humans because of handling litter boxes, not because of their outdoor lives. Given toxo is endemic pretty much everywhere, outdoor cats are not a particular vector.
A strain "first seen in mountain lions" is unlikely to have derived from domestic cats simply due to lack of habitat overlap, even for feral cats (rural outdoor cats in California typically have a lifespan of about five minutes, cuz if the coyotes don't get 'em, the owls will). Seems more likely transmission went the other way, that a mountain lion consumed an infected sea otter carcass.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14, @03:52PM