While HIV continues to provide gainful employment for a wide assortment of public and private individuals all over the globe, another deadly microbe is desperately trying to emulate it, and provide a new golden age for a different group of currently underfunded scientists. Here on the Eastern Front, an international flock of researchers is on the verge of answering one of the great ornithological questions of our time (and simultaneously making the mysterious east a little less mysterious): Which way flies the Mongolian Whooper?
In this NY Times article called "Probing the Mysterious Migration of Swans Suspected in the Spread of Avian Flu", the pure excitement of scientific discovery is almost palpable:
"Dr. Takekawa was part of an international team that spent part of August on the shores of Lake Khorin Tsagaan in Mongolia catching whooper swans and strapping tiny transmitters to their backs. If all goes well, the transmitters will help unveil an ornithological mystery: which way whoopers migrate.
The issue became more important last year when field veterinarians from the Wildlife Conservation Society who were investigating the deaths of hundreds of migratory birds on remote lakes in China and Mongolia found that whoopers were among those infected with A(H5N1) influenza. Their migration patterns are poorly understood, but they may have played a role in the brief appearance of the disease all across Europe early this year".
That's right, thanks to H5N1 funding was given for an American team of ornithologists to travel to Mongolia, catch the molting swans before they became capable of flight and strap transmitters on them – a task far too complex to leave to the Mongolians.
The incidence which focused the scientific spotlight on the Whooper was the surprising discovery of a dead specimen in Scotland.
"A dead infected bird on the Scottish coast in March, originally identified as a local mute swan, was actually a Whooper, Dr. Takekawa said."
A test apparently established that the bird had become infected with H5N1 somewhere in China or Mongolia, then chose to fly to Scotland to die on those bonnie shores.
The mystery of the exact role played by the Whooper in the brief and scattered appearance of the deadly H5N1 in Europe is compounded by the fact that its visits in that part of the world are rare enough to be a bone of contention among scientists
"Some scientists think whooper swans only circle Asia , Dr. Takekawa said, but others believe they cross Siberia into Europe".
Perhaps it was this one bird that took a tour of Europe, starting in Turkey and ending in Scotland where it finally gave up the ghost.
The feat is all the more remarkable since, according to the WHO, the "highly pathogenic" strains of Avian Influenza, to which H5N1 belongs, have a mortality rate in birds that "can approach 100% within 48 hours." It is thus quite possible that science has underestimated the top flying speed of mortally ill water fowls.
On the other hand it must be taken into consideration that most rare tourists in Europe stop only briefly in each country's capital before moving on to the next. There is no reason to believe this should be different for the Whooper
The scientists have so far only been able to track a few birds since transmitters are expensive and the funding sluices not yet fully opening up.
"The study's major limitation: the team could afford to tag only 10 of the 600 swans they saw.
"We would have loved to do more, but those radios cost $4,000 a piece," Dr. Takekawa said."
Not quite in the HIV league, but despite the fact that there was only $40,000 for transmitters the team got a lot of exercise in the process of catching the birds, and the scientific results so far look extremely promising:
"As of this, six birds were still at the lake, three had slipped north over the Russian border and one seemed to be moving off into the dry Mongolian southwest."
Claus Jensen is a Dane living in Thailand where
he is able to eke out a meager but sustainable
existence as a martial arts instructor primarily because
he is much taller than the average Thai, and can overpower most
ordinarily accomplished Thai boxing teachers provided they are half his size and
twice his age.
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