Hundreds of dead or dying sea lions have appeared on Peruvian beaches since January. The animals, majestic carnivores that can reach up to 350 kilos, suffer excruciating convulsions and drowning before dying. Nothing like this has ever been observed in the region. A scientific team confirm now that the culprit of the outbreak is the jump of the avian influenza A(H5N1) virus from seabirds to these wild mammals. The Peruvian and Argentine researchers do not rule out a chilling hypothesis: that the virus has learned again to pass from mammal to mammal, as it apparently did in a mink farm Spanish. This would be the first time this has occurred in nature.
