Bird Flu Kills 4 Endangered Vietnamese Civets

HANOI, March 11 (Reuters) - Bird flu killed four civets in a Vietnamese national park, the second time the rare type of mammal was reported to have died there of the H5N1 virus since 2005, a park official said on Tuesday.

Four endangered Owston's palm civets died early last month at Cuc Phuong park and tests of their samples found they had the H5N1 virus, the official said.

"Visitors are not allowed to come near the civet's area now," the official said by telephone from the park about 90 km (55 miles) south of Hanoi in Ninh Binh province.

In June 2005 three civets, born in captivity and raised in the same cage, died at the park and tests later confirmed they had been infected by bird flu, park officials said. The park has eight of the rare cat-like civets left.

Civets eat pork, worms and fruit, but not poultry.

However, Ninh Binh is one of nine locations where outbreaks have been detected among poultry in the past month, including a farm outside Hanoi, the Animal Health Department said.

It is not the first time that bird flu has killed exotic animals. The H5N1 virus has infected ostriches in South Africa, a clouded leopard and tigers in Thailand.

One of China's top doctors has said that the H5N1 virus has shown signs of mutation and can kill humans more easily if treatment is not given early enough, newspapers reported on Tuesday [ID:nHKG228879].

The H5N1 virus has infected 368 people around the world since 2003, killing 234 of them, including 51 in Vietnam.

Experts fear it could trigger a pandemic killing millions if it ever transmits efficiently among people. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; editing by Grant McCool and Sanjeev Miglani)

Source: Reuters

Cats have also been shown to become infected by H5N1. Perhaps that explains this:

Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.

Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.

The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.
Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.

Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females - were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.

China's leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS - a deadly respiratory virus - in 2003

Source: Daily Mail

Meanwhile, rats will be overrunning Chinese cities.