By Mehul Jani and Ruturaj Jadav
Posted On Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 02:21:12 AM
A day after 58 crows were found dead in Gandhinagar, their deaths still remain a mystery. The forest department had sent three carcasses to the Anand Government Laboratory for a detailed report.
The department was bewildered, when they came across 58 crows falling dead from a peepal tree at Sector 28 in Gandhinagar.
No abnormality has been found in the system of one of the carcasses during the post-mortem examination. However, the post-mortem report of the other two showed traces of infected food.
Superintendent of Kankaria Zoo Dr R K Sahu said, “Besides infected food, the birds could have dropped dead due to cold shock.”
“The mercury has plummeted in the past couple of days. This could result in cold shock, which causes blood circulation to stop, leading to death,” he added.
ANALA director Madhu Menon said, “Crows search for food in groups. As these crows have died at one spot within a few minutes, they might have eaten infected food or something poisonous.”
Conservationist Aditya Roy said, “One reason can be common disease or infection in this group. It has happened in the past in central India and south India. Huge number of vultures had died due to avian malaria in these two regions.”
Meanwhile, Conservator of Forest Anil Johri said, “We are waiting detailed reports from Anand to ascertain the reason behind the death of crows.”
Crows search for food in groups. As these crows have died at one spot within a few minutes, they might have eaten infected food or something poisonous
– Madhu Menon, ANALA director
http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/article/3/2010011720100117022112467e4266c83/Day-later-mystery-behind-death-of-58-crows-unsolved.html
(Submitted by Caty Bergman)
Sunday, 17 January 2010
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This sounds suspiciously like poisoning with alpha chloralose bait, whether deliberately (crows are a pest in many parts of India, due to their ability to breed to huge populations in cities) or accidentally. Alpha Chloralose is a stupifying agent, the effects of which are magnified by cold so a dose intended to merely knock out a flock to allow their relocation or humane killing might very well have performed very differently.
ReplyDeleteIn cold weather birds tend to want to conserve energy, so a flock of crows finding alpha chloralose baits might well just stuff themselves silly then fly off, rather than lingering on the baiting site; cold bait would be much more slowly digested than warmer bait thus the effects wouldn't hit the birds as quickly as otherwise. Once in a roost, the birds would then settle down and start to feel the effects and wouldn't then move much. Cold magnifies the effects of many poisons including alpha chloralose, so the deaths of this flock would not be unexpected in this circumstance.
The person or persons doing the baiting might well have only wanted to dope the birds in order to catch and relocate them; killing the flock was probably unintentional so I suspect these people will simply have cleared up the uneaten bait and quietly disappeared; if the poisoning of the birds was unintentional (alpha chloralose is a commonly used mouse poison) then this applies even more.