Over 17,000 southern elephant seal pups — accounting for 95% of the pups born last year — have died from a highly virulent strain of H5N1, known as bird flu, in a mass death event on the Valdés Peninsula in Argentina.
The bird flu outbreak was officially confirmed by the Argentine Government Animal Health Service (SENASA), raising concerns among conservationists and scientists that the virus had mutated to be transmissible from mammal-to-mammal.
