Science Friday - Avian Flu, Curly Hair. June 16, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Curly Hair Keeps Your Scalp Cooler According to a fascinating new study, curly locks are better than straight hair at keeping your scalp cool. Researchers shone bright lights on three different manikins—one with no hair, one with loosely curled hair and another with tight curls. Solar radiation bounced off the tightly curled hair, and less heat reached the manikin’s scalp than the straight haired manikin. The manikin with loose curls was right in the middle. The research is part of an effort to better understand the role of hair texture in human evolution, as humans are the only mammals with the majority of body hair atop our heads. Ira talks with Dr. Tina Lasisi, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of quantitative and computational biology at the University of Southern California, and incoming assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.   Unprecedented Avian Flu Outbreak Continues Avian influenza has been circulating for decades among wild birds, but the US is now experiencing the worst outbreak in its history. That’s because of a specific strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza, which has left around 60 millions birds—mostly poultry—dead. This has implications for us all, whether you’re frustrated about the price of eggs, worried about your backyard chickens, or concerned about yet another threat to public health. In this live call-in, Ira talks with Ashleigh Blackford, the California Condor Coordinator at the US Fish & Wildlife Service about the initiative to vaccinate California condors—the first of its kind to vaccinate any bird. Then Ira explores what this outbreak means for other wildlife, poultry, and for us. He talks with Dr. Kristy Pabilonia, professor and director of the Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratories at Colorado State University, and Dr. Richard Webby, director of the WHO’s Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds and a researcher at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. A bit later in the hour, the bird flu. This highly pathogenic strain is ripping through flocks, especially poultry. And now it's making its way into mammals. So just how worried should we be? We'll be talking to scientists monitoring the current outbreak. But first, we are quickly approaching summer and I'm thinking about how to keep my body cool. I do the linen shirt, the wide-brimmed hat, wear some shorts. But you know what I wonder about? My hair, does hair play a part in keeping you cool? Turns out it does. According to a fascinating new study, it depends on your type of hair. Curly hair. Curly locks are better than straight hair at keeping your scalp cool. But why? Well, we'll be answering that and taking your questions. Give us a call. Our number is 844-724-8255-844-Sy-4-Sy-Talk or tweet us at Si-Fri. Do you have curly hair? Do you notice your head staying cooler in the sun than your straight-haired friends? Are you curious about the evolutionary benefits of curly hair? We want to hear from you. 844-724-825-8-4-4-Sy-Talk or tweet us at SciFri. Joining me now to help

answer these questions. And more is my guest, Dr. Tina Lassisi, incoming assistant professor in anthropology at the University of Michigan. She joins us from Los Angeles. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. How are you doing? Nice to have you. Fine, I am. Thank you. I'm doing well. To start off, I want to talk a little bit about the experimental setup you used to come to this conclusion. You used a mannequin named Newton, three different wigs, right? That's right. Tell me about a little more how you designed this experiment. Okay, well, I have to give credit where credit is due, and I was working with some great people, some thermal engineers, and physiologists at Loughborough University who work in the field of environmental ergonomics.

So they're very used to asking questions about how different fabrics affect our ability to cool down or to stay warm. And they have these climate controlled chambers where they have a wind tunnel where they put Newton and usually put different clothes on him. But what I decided to do was put a bunch of different wigs on Newton and see what that did in terms of heat transfer. And what made you think about doing that? Did you wonder about that yourself? Absolutely. So I've been wondering about curly hair since I first started learning about human evolution in undergrad. And I always wonder, like, you know, why does it exist? Why do I have it? And what would the evolutionary benefit be of it? because if you think of most mammals, most mammals have straight hair, right?

And there's a couple of them that have crimped hair, if you're thinking about sheep. And then we have a lot of very special-looking dogs that we have bred to look all kinds of ways, including poodles. And I personally have a poodle, and they have hair that is, you know, kind of curly, but it's nowhere near that texture that you see in tightly coiled hair like a lot of people of African descent have and some Southeast Asian people have. So I was very curious about why evolution decided, okay, now's the time for me to come up with something new. Right. And we have photos of Newton and the mannequin at ScienceFriiday.com slash curls if our listeners want to see it.

Now, as I mentioned at the top, the curliest hair kept the mannequin's head the coolest. Did you figure out why that was? So we have a guess about why that should be happening. And a lot of that has to do with work that's been done on mammals before. So a lot of research on mammalian coats shows that if you have a deep coat, like a very long coat, counterintuitively, that can keep you cooler in solar radiation. And that's because the amount of radiation that reaches the skin is much less than if you had a shorter coat because it basically bounces off the different hair fibers. But the added benefit that we have with curly human hair is that you're also able to lose much more heat. So usually with a thick fur coat, you have a trade-off.

You minimize how much you're overheating from the sun, but you also can't really get rid of as much heat. And with human curly hair, we have this one-way mirror effect where basically we're able to minimize how much much heat is coming in without minimizing how much heat we can lose, which is perfect if you are out in the dry savannah and, you know, a biped who is just trying to evolve with their big brain. You also looked at the role of sweat in helping people cool down and found something interesting. Yes. So Newton unfortunately can't sweat yet, but what we did, what we did is we made his scalp wet and then put the wigs on top of it to simulate what it would be like to evaporate sweat from the scalp. And we basically wanted to understand how that would be influenced by different hair.

And unsurprisingly, if you have no hair on your head, it's really easy to evaporate all of that sweat because there's no barrier. And so you get to that hotter temperature sooner, that water or sweat evaporates and you cool down. But the thing is you need to cool down because a naked scalp or a bald scalp, however you want to call it, it overheats a lot more. So what we know is that with curly hair, basically the hair is keeping you so cool that it's kind of getting in the way of that sweat evaporating optimally. Wow. So people with, you know, a lot of people shave their heads now, right? They have to watch out? that's true i mean i myself decided to cut my hair very short and yes i would say now that i don't have all of that protection anymore the main thing i learned from my experiments is please people out there who do not have any hair by choice or by uh nature wear a hat wear a hat please

that's good there's also a study to test how much hair affects sweating they had men go outside in the sun with hair, then shave it off? Yes, there's this really cool study that was done in Brazil, I believe, where they had a bunch of men do exercise out in the sun with their hair, and then they repeated those same exercises after shaving their hair off. And what they found is that all of their physiological markers stayed the same with the exception of how much they were sweating. So the men after they shaved their heads were sweating a lot more.

And what you can infer from that is if the body temperature is the same, but you need to sweat more once your hair shaved off, that is telling you that the body is probably compensating by sweating more, which kind of adds to our results and says, okay, well, if you're able to keep your head cool, you don't need to sweat as much, which means you save water. I'm just going to throw this out because I just thought about it. If you have a bald head and you're sweating, are you sweating more to cool yourself off? Does your body know there's a place that could release the heat through your head? I don't know if it's so much about knowing. And that's where, you know, future research is going to be really interesting and exciting. But my suspicion is that it just has to do with all your physiological responses are because of what your brain is able to tell your body. And if your head is overheating, then your brain is going to say, okay, guys, we're overheating.

we need to cool down. And so it makes sense to me that if the head is overheating, that is going to give that signal very quickly of we need to start sweating. Yeah. Let's talk about the curly versus straight hair study. What surprised you most about that, about the results? So what surprised me most was the extent of the effect. I didn't expect it to be so dramatic. I had some personal anecdotal experience of, you know, hanging out with a straight-haired friend who happened to touch my hair while we were out in the sun entirely with consent and almost burned their hand on it. And they said, oh, it's like so hot. Are you not overheating? And I was like, I don't feel anything. Them on the other hand with their super straight hair, like, you know, they were, they were suffering. They were

struggling. So I kind of knew that there would be some difference. But just to illustrate how much the difference was, we ran all the experiments and we ran the curliest wig first and then the naked scalp and then we ran like the moderately curled wig and then we ran it with straight hair and we actually had to redo all of our experiments at a lower temperature because the straight hair wig made the scalp overheat so much that we couldn't measure the temperature differences that we needed for our results. Wow, off the needle. Off the, off the, off the, why you pin the needle as we used to say. Here's a tweet from Rachel from Rochester says her curly hair, keeps her hot, not cool. But then Stasi from Lake Mary, Florida says, I want to know, will curly

hair keep me hotter in cold weather? I mean, the good news. That is a great question. And the answer is no, which also gives us an interesting, you know, possible hypothesis to explore in terms of humans who lived in very cold places. So our current working hypothesis is that our ancestors, last common ancestors of all humans had tightly curled hair and dark skin. And then once they started leaving the continent adapting to different places, it may have been the case that in addition to adapting their skin color, they had to adapt their hair because they actually have to stay warm instead of staying cool. Well, it seems like if curly hair has lots of benefits, why did some people evolve to have straight hair? Well, because you're going to lose a lot of heat, right? So straight hair is very good

at keeping that heat in. And also, just from a genetics perspective, if there's no pressure to keep curly hair, then you can have all kinds of variation evolve. And what we think happened is that this was really important as humans were growing their bigger brains. But once they have those big brains, they could use them and each other's support to come up with ways of avoiding overheating that didn't require them to be out in the sun. Now, I know that researchers have documented that darker skin color is related to the amount UV radiation they soak in, people from hotter, sunnier places tend to have darker skin tones, but curly hair seems not to evenly match up here.

That is correct. What's going on? So that's something that I noticed from the beginning because my advisor, Nina Gibbonski, she'd done all of this work on skin color, which inspired me. And I noticed that with hair, we don't have the same patterns. You have people in really hot places like the Amazon who have, you know, stick straight hair and some places in Asia as well. And basically that supports this idea of there isn't.

a pressure. They may have been a pressure early on and natural selection acted on it once it was the, you know, our common ancestor that needed to grow that bigger brain, but afterwards it just wasn't a selective pressure. And on top of that, the curly hair only works if the source of heat is solar radiation. If you're talking about ambient temperature, having no hair is the best, because any barrier between you and the environment, especially if it's humid, yeah, you're out of luck. That's it. Well, we're out of time, Dr. Lassisi. Thank you for taking you. time to be with us today. Thanks for having me. Dr. Tina Lassisi, incoming assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. We have to take a break and when we come back, Avian Flu

101. What's going on with this terrible outbreak? What birds are at risk? What threat could this virus pose to us? We'll be right back after this short break with some of the answers and your questions. Give us a call 844-8-24-8-255-8-44-Sy-Tock. We'll be right back. Stay with us. Hey, Ira here with an update that Cephalopod Week is just around the corner, and it's going to be incredible. All squitting aside, I'd like to invite you to join the Cephaloparty by sponsoring some virtual cephalopods. Here's what I mean. Our talented team of digital producers has built a sea of support on our website, giving each of you the chance to sponsor a cephalopod for just $8. With each donation, you'll get to pick from one of eight beautifully illustrated

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Again, that's ScienceFriiday.com slash sea of support. I'm Irafledo, squitting you farewell, and thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Last month, the USDA announced that it'll take emergency action to protect the critically endangered California condor from the bird flu, and not just any bird flu, but a specific strain of the highly pathogenic avian influenza, the H5N1, that has left millions of birds dead, mostly poultry, you have seen the egg prices. What is going on here? Why the death of all these birds?

Let's take step back and look at the big picture at the avian flu, specifically called highly pathogenic H5N1. Why this outbreak is so bad, what can we do about it, should we be concerned for ourselves, and later we'll get into the California Condor and talk about why that is an endangered species due to the flu. So here to talk about all things bird flu, are my guest, Dr. Christie Papillonia,

professor and director of the veterinary diagnostic lab at Colorado State University. That's in Fort Collins. Dr. Richard Webby, director of the WHO's Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds and Researcher at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital based in Memphis, Tennessee. Both of you, welcome to Science Friday.

Hello. Thanks, all right. You're welcome. Christy, I feel like I hear about the avian flu every year over and over again, but what's different about it this time? It seems really worse. Is that correct? Well, this is the largest outbreak that the U.S. has seen,

so currently affecting more than six or close to 60 million poultry. That includes 325 million or, I'm sorry, 325 commercial flocks and 511 backyard flocks. Wow, I want to let our listeners that they want to call in and talk about this, with us. We're welcoming you. 844-724-8255-8-4-Sai Talk talking about the bird flu. Maybe you have questions because there's a lot to talk about. Okay, so there was this big outbreak about 10 years ago, right, though? There was a large outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, similar to this virus, same lineage, back in 2014, 2015. But that outbreak was mostly detected in commercial poultry

and the states in the USDA were able to respond and stamp out or eradicate that virus situation at that time. Richard, genetically speaking, what's different about this strain? Yeah, so there's actually quite a few things different. So, you know, as we've just heard, this is sort of not the first time we've dealt with a family of viruses, but this particular version of it from a sort of virus-speak perspective, it's picked up a number of different genetic elements, which sort of sets it apart from what was here before. And for reasons we don't fully understand, you know, these genetic elements have really changed the behavior of this virus. At least that's a hypothesis.

What do you mean by that? Please tell me, elaborate on that. Yeah, so, well, at least from a more American perspective, what we know happened with somewhere, in probably the mid-2020, this virus was sort of happily doing its thing over in Europe, Asia, Africa. It changed form at that stage. So before that time, it was predominantly what we'd call an H5 in 8 form. And it switched out that N8 for an N1. This is what flu viruses do.

They sort of mix and match all the time. And that changed it. It spread widely through wild birds in Europe. Europe and then that sort of pushed the virus over into our shores. And when we look at what happened to that virus, getting to your question eventually here, what had when they pushed it over to our shores, that virus that had been living its life over in Europe, all of a sudden started to interact with flu viruses that way we have in our part of the world. And so it went underwent a process we call reassortment, which if you think about sort of just two viruses infect the same cell,

they can mix and match gene segments. So that's kind of what happened with this virus when it got to ashores. And so it started to interact with viruses present in wild birds in our part of the world, picked up some of the genes from those viruses. And certainly we looked a lot in laboratory studies at the virus that first came over and the virus that spread subsequently, those viruses actually behave quite differently in terms of ability to cause disease, etc., etc. So that's quite what I mean by the virus came in, changed genetically,

and changed the biology of the virus to some extent. That's really interesting. Christy, and this virus now is making its way into mammals? How is that happening? Yeah, so the virus has been detected, I think, right now in about 18 mammal species in the U.S., particularly carnivore species like foxes, raccoons, bears, mountain lions. So potentially animals that are getting infected by consuming sick or dead infected birds. We're also seeing it in marine mammals, such as seals and otter.

we know that those species are susceptible to the virus. And should, you know, because Richard, the virus is going from birds to mammals, what does that tell you about the virus? Yeah, so why we get a little bit concerned about that when we see these mammal infections is, you know, right now this is a virus that is still really a bird virus. So it's, you know, it's really optimized to replicate and transmit in birds. But we know, we talked a little bit about these flu viruses can't change. And this virus has got to undergo some mutations to switch from being a verd virus to being a mammal virus.

And so that's what we think is those changes are not going to happen while this virus is sort of spreading amongst birds. So while it goes bird to bird to bird, there's no pressure on it to change to be a better mammal virus. But when we see these mammal infections, you know, that's the environment where we think those can. key changes are more likely to occur. So from someone who watches these viruses from a human health perspective, when we see mammal infections, that's when we start to worry. Because again, it just gives the virus many, many more opportunities to switch from being a bird virus to being a mammal and eventually human virus. Well, that will be my next follow-up question. How worried should we be about it becoming a human virus? Yeah. So right now, this is, as I said,

It's still a bird virus. So it is, as a human, it is very, very difficult to catch us for us, luckily. And so, you know, if you look at CDC, WHO assessments of the situation, it is a low risk for humans. I'm, you know, absolutely behind that. You know, unfortunately, that risk is not static and it can change over time. But, yeah, right now, still mostly a bird virus. You've got a, if you're a chicken, you've got far more to worry about right now, then you

have if you're a human. All right. Let me bring in another kind of bird that's affected. You mentioned chickens, but so far we know more than 20 California condors have died from the virus and for a species with fewer than 600 total individuals, that's critical. So officials are planning to vaccinate. They're going to vaccinate these vulnerable birds. And that's the first of any bird in the United States.

Here to talk about this and why these birds are getting the jab is Ashley Blackford, California Condor, coordinator at the Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento. Welcome to Science Friday. Well, thank you. It's so nice to be here. Nice to have you. When did you start to get concerned that the condors would be affected by this virus? Well, you know, we've been watching this virus since the outbreak started of this particular

strain in 2022, and we've been, you know, looking at what kind of steps we could take to up our biosecurity for our field sites as well as our captive breeding. and propagation centers. But we didn't know whether or not this virus was going to impact California condors, right? You know, viruses have come through, and sometimes certain species are really susceptible, and sometimes they're not. And so it wasn't until we had the outbreak start in Arizona that we even knew that condors were going to be impacted the way they are and that they would get sick and they would die.

So, you know, early preparations in 2022, but a whole different take on the situation. come March of 23. So do you know how the virus is transmitted among the condors? No, but California condors are really, they're cooperative or communal. They feed together, they roost together, and so they are really susceptible of spread. So, you know, once condor gets sick, they come to the carcass and they feed. So their life history is just set up to be a good spreader of disease once they get sick. unfortunately. Yeah, it's sorry to hear that. Give me the reasoning behind vaccinating them.

How does that work? Well, and so the California calendar population is unique in that, unfortunately, because it is so small and it is so highly managed, it ultimately for a situation like this, it sets us up as a really good opportunity to test the vaccine. We typically capture every single individual annually. We do the health checks on them. We put transmitters on them and this is actually when we do their West Now vaccine. And so we have the opportunity to continue to monitor our wild birds once we do vaccinate them. Unfortunately, like you said earlier, our population is just so small. We don't have the size to allow for this natural evolution, which would be our preference, right? That you would allow the exposure over time and

you'd end up with healthier condors at the other side because they had listed this outbreak and come out on the other side, but we just don't have the population numbers to go through that natural process, unfortunately. Do you have to catch every one of the condors and give them a shot, basically? So yes, so right now we're still in our trials, and so we are testing the vaccine on black vultures to make sure it's safe and to ensure that they elicit immune response. Our next stage of the trial will be to vaccinate a subset of captive condors, and if we again see that it's safe and we get a good immune response, then we'll shift to our wild birds. And yes, and so in which case we will need to capture each individual and give them a vaccination.

These are humongous birds, right? They are humongous birds. They have a nine-foot wing span, a very big bird. Wow. Is everyone in agreement that vaccinating these birds is a good idea? I've also heard an argument that it may be better for these flocks to just go through it and population-wise, they'll be healthier. The strong ones will survive. And yes, that would be a better scenario holistically. I think that's really the most appropriate approach for most wild birds. Like I said, our condor population is just so small. You know, we lost 20% of that Arizona block in just a month. And that's not the way we want to be going when we're running a recovery program. So, yeah,

we're looking to implement additional measures just to see if we can get us through the exposure. And if things go well, I mean, if the plans work out with the condors and the vaccines help, could this be used for other birds or a wild or a livestock? You know, that is not my decision to make. I think it's, like I said, the unique thing about California condors is they are, it is such a small population. We do typically capture each bird every year. And so we're set up to, to be a trial. I think For most other populations, it's probably not a good fit. Well, let me bring in my other guests, Dr. Christie Papolonia and Dr. Richard Webby. Dr. Papalonia, what do you think of this trial?

I think it's very interesting. I certainly think that the U.S. needs to be evaluating vaccines and their efficacy, potentially for species like we just talked about, and then also looking at it in commercial poultry. It's complex in any species you would vaccinate. and it's certainly complex. The concept of vaccinating is complex for commercial poultry also. Why is it so hard to vaccinate commercial poultry? Well, a number of reasons. So I should start by saying commercial poultry in the United States, they're highly vaccinated against a wide variety of bird diseases. So vaccines are commonly used in the commercial poultry industry. The concern about influenza vaccine,

there's a number of them, for example, a concern about it impairing the U.S.'s ability for international trade. and the U.S. is one of the largest exporters of poultry products in the world. So, for example, we're the second largest broiler exporter behind Brazil. Additionally, the commercial poultry industry is very large. And so the vaccine has to be able to be applied to billions of birds. So for example, the U.S. raises nine billion. That's billion with a bee broilers. Those are meat-type chickens in the United States.

Wow. Wow. We're talking about a lot of birds this hour on Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Our number 844-724-8255. Maybe I can get a quick phone call in before we have to go to the break. Erin, and is it LaPort, Colorado? Yeah, hi. Hi there.

Go ahead. I have backyard and front yard geese. They're domestic geese that mow my lawn and are just generally very entertaining creatures to have around. So this question is at the forefront of my mind. And I'm really curious why songbirds are apparently less susceptible to avian influence. I'm wondering if this is a more a behavioral thing, if there's something different in their physiology from raptors and waterfowl, or if it's just that we're not finding them. You know, geese are hunted and hunters are out there.

And then another part to this question is what about, so because of the European origin of the virus, are, you know, starlings or house pharaohs that are often in large flocks, are they more susceptible? And what does that mean when, you know, flocks of starlings are around, you know, a feedlot, for example, where there are mammals? Well, let me get, let me get, let me get, let me get an answer. Dr. Webby, can you attack that? I can have a crack at it and then get others input. But, you know, I think from the perspective of geese, you know, we know they are a susceptible

to a host of this particular virus. So from a risk perspective, you know, they do represent some risk. But, you know, typically when these sorts of birds are infected, there will be some sort of disease signs with them typically. So, you know, if they're healthily wandering around, the risk is probably pretty low. I mean, risk in terms of risk to the people around there. Your point about songbirds, you know, we know,

not all birds are the same in terms of susceptibility to this flu or any flu. And even within ducks, there are different sorts of ducks that are more susceptible. So sort of my gut feeling is that for songbirds, it's more of a just intrinsic susceptibility to this virus. And, you know, people have looked over the years at these types of birds, the passering birds, the starlings, et cetera. And they just don't seem to be really good hosts for flu.

So, you know, we hope that stays that way. Do we, is that a genetic thing going on there? Probably. No, yeah, probably. And again, there's probably a number of different thoughts. on this, but, you know, they, again, even from, even if we just look at people from different populations of people, there's different susceptibilities to infectious disease, including flu, and, you know, it's the same type of thing that's occurring in birds probably.

Dr. Papillonia, have anything to add? I thought, yeah, so the only thing I'd probably add is just that we are detecting virus in some of the peridomestic species, so species that do fly around and live around houses and certainly could, you know, be around houses where people are raising backyard birds. So such as magpies, crows, a few other species, but as Dr. Webby said, they're not, we're not detecting the virus nearly as much as we are in the natural host species like waterfowl and shorebirds. All right. We have to take a break.

We will come back and talk lots more about the flu that's going around in birds. Our number 844-724-8255 is our number. You can also tweet us at SciFri. Lots of questions about, we'll talk about your backyard feeder. What to do there? other birds. You may be raising chickens in your backyard. Two, you may have flocks of birds. We'll talk about, we'll answer all those questions and more that you ask. 844-724-8255. We'll see you on the other side of the break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

In case you're just joining us, we're chatting about the avian flu with Dr. Christie Pabalonia of Colorado State University, Dr. Richard Webby, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, Ashley Blackford, California Condor Coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, on number 844-8255. And we're talking about all the aspects of the flu. Richard, have there been any cases in people so far? Yeah, so they have. If we sort of take a wider step back over the past 25 years or so,

we've been dealing with this, sort of the great-great-granddaddies of this particular. H5 virus. We've seen about a tad under a thousand infections over that time. If we sort of homin a little bit more on this more recent outbreak, so there have been some. There's been one reported case in the US. This was someone who was actually involved in depopulating a flock of chickens and a little bit of uncertainty about whether that individual was actually infected or was just sort of carrying virus out of the barn in their nose. But there have been some South America. couple of infections with actually pretty severe infections with this virus. So, yeah, it's a very, very small number. Some of those infections have been severe. Let's go to the phones. Let's go to

Robert in Wilmington, North Carolina. Hi, Robert. Welcome. Yeah, you have to turn your radio down. One of the tenants of talking to a talk show is to turn your radio down because we're on a 10-second delete. Robert, are you there? I guess he's not there, but his question was highly relevant to everybody. who's wondering, what are the best practices for you to do? You know, if you're at a homeowner, or you have birds in your backyard, are you raising chickens? Are there any best practices? What should we be doing? Christy, can you give us an idea? Sure. If you're raising backyard flocks, you now and always want to be really practicing good biosecurity. So those are measures that you're using to prevent introduction of a pathogen into a population. So measures such as cleaning and

disinfection, controlling access, not introducing new groups of birds, those measures are important all the time, but particularly very, very important now. We're also recommending to some backyard flock owners about thinking about how to keep their birds enclosed so that they're really minimizing contact as much as possible with wild birds. That's very helpful. And then just generally, anything you can do to prevent birds from commingling is going to help decrease transmission and spread of this virus. Richard, as you mentioned earlier, it's currently pretty unlikely for humans to get infected but not impossible. What would need to happen for human transmission to become more widespread? Yeah, it's a great question.

If we think about this again from the perspective of the virus, we know there's about three or four things. that this virus has to change to switch from being a bird virus to being a human virus. And these sort of range from sort of the nitty gritty ins and outs of how this virus replicates inside a cell, and it's different if you're in a bird cell than in a human cell, through to actually what these viruses bind to on the surface of the cell. So influenza viruses, including this one, bind to sugars on the host cell. But the sugars that are present on say a duck cells are a little bit different, those on the human cells. So this particular virus, one of the things we know it has to change is it has to mutate

the part of the virus that binds to that sugar and bind less to the sugar on the avon cell and more to the sugar on the human cell. So there are these molecular markers that we know this virus have to do, and that's, you know, we're watching very closely for any evidence that they're actually occurring. But, you know, luckily to date, not many of them have been. Let's hope our luck holds out. Charity in Waldenburg, Colorado. Welcome to Science Friday. Howdy. Yeah, you're getting a lot from Colorado today. So I actually have a question and possibly an answer. So they were asking about how to keep your flock safe. I just went through a free reign small flock outbreak about a month and a half ago.

I have 36 birds. One bird got it super bad, crusty eyes, nifly noses, everything. We called her immediately as soon as we found her and we actually buried her body because we were concerned about transmission and trans species infection vector control. And we had one that just kept getting bubbly eye and I kept treating her, treating her and treating her and I was like, you know what? It's not worth it. And before I got the color, a bobcat got her. Are these chickens?

What kind of birds are we talking here? These are chicken. These are Heritage American chickens. I've been raising the same breed of flock with new roosters every couple of years for about 11 years. Wow. And out of that, so I lost two, technically one to a bobcat, one to the flu. Nobody else had any other symptoms except for one older bird, and she had the loose chicken poe. It kind of looks gross.

Well, I want to get, do you have a question that you told us? So my question is, the standard protocol is to slaughter all your birds. And I completely disagree with that. I guess in a large factory situation you have to. But I found that not killing all my birds is going to allow my flock to have a strength in an immune system and pass it along to their chicks. So better quarantine, cleaning all your dishes, and I use time oil, OSHA. And I just, if anybody looks funny, I immediately put them to the side.

So I'm wondering if we can reconsider the advice to cull everyone's locks rather than do maybe some damage control and isolate because there's no hope for me locking my birds outside. That's not going to happen. Great question. Let me see if I can get an answer. calling. Who wants to bring that? Christy, Richard, who would like to tackle that one? So I'll respond. So a little, excuse me. Go ahead. Christy? Go ahead. Sure. So this virus is highly, highly transmissible. So if one bird and a flock gets it,

typically they're all exposed. They're all going to get it. And it carries with it very high mortality. So your best line of defense, of course, is reporting, doing diagnostic tests. to confirm that it truly is highly pathogenic avian influenza virus. And then our response is going to be to, as you mentioned, depopulate the flock. Because we don't want to risk any birds remaining that would be able to transmit the virus. And then again, the mortality is so high anyway when we've had backyard flocks get infected, almost all of them, if not all of them, will die of the virus anyway. Ashley, did you want to jump in here?

So, yeah, you know, this is one of the challenges with the Wild California Condor program, right, is if without a vaccine, we were looking at what are preventative measures we can take. And so our field crew was collecting birds that looked ill and bringing them in for care. And we've been setting up our system to allow for these testing facilities and quarantine facilities. And although, you know, like Christy said, it's probably not appropriate if you have condensed poultry situations, but in wild birds where they're flying around and they are so valuable like each California Condor is, we are trying to kind of take that intermediate tract of quarantining and treatment to the best of our ability. But, you know, time will tell if that's going to be a good technique.

Interesting. Let's go back to the phone. So many more questions. Let's see. And here's an interesting one from Stu in Tana said Washington. Is it, Stu? Toask it. I was close. Not really. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, I am here in Washington now, but in the wintertime, I do a lot of waterfowl hunting down on the lower Colorado River, and I know that they were testing for Asian influenza last year and found it there, so I know it's there. And, you know, in waterfowl hunting, I use retrievers to retrieve the birds, and I'm wondering if their exposure, just from retrieving a bird is if there's any risk involved there.

Good. To them. Yeah. Good question. Christy, what would you think? So there's risk for mammals, as Dr. Webby mentioned before. Particularly this is right now, mostly a bird virus. But there is potential for mammals to be infected,

although I don't personally know of any dog detections of avian influenza or of this virus. Yeah. Yeah. Let's go see if I can get Dave in Manchester, Georgia. Dave, another interesting question. It's actually Steve, Ira. Hi there, Steve. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm a falcon.

I work with birds of prey, hawks, eagles, and that kind of stuff, and was just interested in your guest comments on how it may affect those of us at hunt with birds of prey. Birds of prey. How is it affecting birds of prey? That's an interesting question. Richard, do you have any weigh in on that? Yeah, so we know that birds of prey are susceptible to this virus and we've unfortunately seen many others succumb to it. I guess it depends a lot on, of course, what they're preying on.

If it happens to be they're preying on a bird that's heavily infected with this virus, they absolutely can get infected themselves and die. And we've seen many examples of this amongst the likes of eagles. So, yeah, they're a host. We know can't get infected. So I guess if the question is, are they susceptible? Absolutely. And if they happen to be feeding on something that's sick,

they're likely to get it themselves. What about our backyard feeders, Richard? Should we just not do that anymore until this is God? Yeah, again, I think, as I said, the risk is low. So probably the risk from a backyard feeder is probably... Well, what about spreading it from bird to bird that share of the feeder? Is there any? Yeah, well, it's potentially, but again, coming back to the fact, you know,

which of the birds that are most susceptible to this, it's, you know, probably not the ones that are going to be on your average feeder in the backyard. So, yes, it probably increased the risk a little bit, but from my perspective, it's not a real risk activity. Let's go to Nina in Spring, Texas. Hi, Nina. Nina, are you there? Yes, I am.

Can you hear me all right? I can hear you now. Please, go ahead. Greetings to you all. I'm wondering there has not yet been any discussion of something more simply preventative, and I was looking online while waiting to talk to you. How about for the birds that are held in captivity, how about fortifying their food? No one's mentioned that for the preventative side of things.

I'm hearing that green tea works. I mean, I do my own for my human body, and I'm doing rather well, rather than the afterfact of vaccination and all this stuff, why not a preventative in the food? Okay, Christy, can you comment on that? So there's no research that I know of that would talk about anything like that, like green tea or some sort of supplement that would prevent any avian influenza infection. I mean, again, this is a really transmissible, very terrible virus with very high mortality.

It's a Science Friday from WNIC Studio. Christy, can there be, is there any plan to vaccinate poultry? You know, can you do it? Not just the condors, but billions of birds. So can it be done yes? And I know there are a lot of scientists and government agencies working on developing vaccines and evaluating efficacy and safety. So it goes back to the question of should we do it?

So what's our best tactic at addressing the outbreaks that we're seeing now in commercial poultry and even in wild birds, right? And there's probably different answers based on different animal species, different sectors of the market. But it's something that I know the USDA is really looking closely at right now and trying to determine what's the best course of action. In the past, our response has always been stamping out or to population. So it is a change of our past efforts. Now, I always talk about following the money. And one of the money things we've seen is the huge increase in the price of eggs. But here's the second. But here's the second. half of this question. I have not seen that in the price of chicken parts, poultry parts. Why is that?

So part of that is just where we're seeing the virus in and what sectors we're seeing the virus in. Egg layers have been widely affected. For example, in my state, we had outbreaks in nearly all of our egg laying operations with just a few month time span affected more than six million commercial layers. So that really decimated egg production in Colorado, and it was really hard to buy eggs at the grocery stores here in Colorado for a number of months. The virus is being seen more in the northern parts of the U.S., and part of that's due to migratory waterfowl flyways and where birds are commingling, and fewer detections down, for example, in the southern states, and it's in the southern states where we tend to raise a lot of broilers,

so those are the meat-type birds where you're buying meat parts, like you mentioned, at the grocery store. And how do you keep track of this outbreak? I mean, how do you monitor it? So there's a network of labs called the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, which is under the United States Department of Agriculture, so it's a bunch of state and university labs that are doing surveillance across the U.S. and that early detection is just really important for detecting the virus

and knowing where it's at in bird and mammal populations. We've got over 16 nal labs looking for the virus, and then, of course, there's lots of other groups doing diagnostic testing. So that's how we're monitoring the virus. You can actually go on the USDA's website, and there's lots of information that's current and up to date about where the virus is being detected in both commercial poultry, wild birds, backyard poultry, and mammals. Wow, very interesting. And we have run out of time so many questions. I want to thank all of you for taking time to be with us today.

Dr. Christie Pablonia, professor and director of the veterinary diagnostics lab. That's at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Dr. Richard Webby, director of the WHO's Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds. and a researcher at St. Jude's in Memphis, Tennessee. Ashley Blackford, California Condor Coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service based in Sacramento. Thank you all for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

One last thing before we go. Astronomer Owen Gingrich passed away last month. He had been Professor Emeritus of Astronomy of the History of Science at Harvard, along with being a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. He was a very visible scientist. He was eager to talk about his belief that science and God were not mutually exclusive. And he spoke with me in 2006 about integrating science and religion in his latest book, God's universe. We're looking for a kind of middle road between two fundamental extremes. You can have fundamentalist scientists who are so absolutely sure.

they understand it all and who are hardcore atheists. And you can have fundamentalists on the religious side who are prepared to take a literalist reading of the scriptures that has not been borne out historically. And it was for these people who are open-minded and willing to think about these questions, not from an extreme viewpoint, that I've written my book for. There needs to be a kind of a middle voice in this, and I've tried to represent that. Owen Gingrich passed away at 93. And that wraps up this week.

If you missed any part of the program or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts. We ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And, of course, you can contact this all week on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Or if you like, you can email us the classic way. SciFri at ScienceFri.com. feedback. Tell us what you'd like us to cover. Have a great holiday weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.