How H5N1 Went from an Sickness in Wild Birds to a International Pandemic Menace

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Shortly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

H5N1 hen flu has been making quite a lot of headlines since final 12 months, and for good cause: since March 2024 this subtype of hen flu has contaminated upwards of 1,000 herds of dairy cattle, elevating considerations in regards to the virus’s skill to go between mammals.

This week Science Shortly is doing a three-part deep dive to convey you the newest analysis on hen flu. From visiting dairy farms to touring cutting-edge virology labs we’ll discover what scientists have discovered about hen flu—and why it poses such a possible danger to people.

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As we speak’s episode brings us again to the beginning: the wild flocks the place new strains of hen flu evolve and unfold. Our host is Lauren Younger, affiliate editor for well being and drugs at Scientific American.

[CLIP: Birds cawing.]

Pamela McKenzie: So many crimson knots—it’s unbelievable.

Lauren Younger: Out on Norbury’s Touchdown, a small strip of sandy seaside on the southern tip of New Jersey on the Delaware Bay, Pamela McKenzie friends by means of her binoculars at a large flock of shorebirds.

McKenzie: It’s simply, like, a sea of crimson bellies.

Younger: A flurry of various migratory birds, together with crimson knots, ruddy turnstones and sanderlings, are making a pit cease on their lengthy migration as much as the Arctic Circle.

The birds are simply in sight, and Pam desperately desires to get nearer with out disturbing them. However there’s an issue: the excessive tide has crammed a small channel that’s blocking our path.

Younger (tape): Wow, there’s, like, tons of them over there. That’s wild.

McKenzie: In fact, proper the place we have to go.

Younger: So most individuals go to the seaside for the cool waves, the salty breeze and the sunshine. Some would possibly go to gather seashells. However Pam is out right here accumulating hen poop.

Yearly in mid-Could she hops between the varied seashores of Delaware Bay, scooping poop that simply would possibly comprise avian influenza viruses. By the second day of this 12 months’s assortment her staff had already discovered samples that got here again constructive for various hen flu viruses, however not the headline-making H5N1—no less than not but.

McKenzie: What’s distinctive about Delaware Bay is that it’s a hotspot for influenza. Yearly these birds migrate right here, and we discover influenza—and totally different influenza—yearly.

Younger: Pam is a virus detective. As director of surveillance for the St. Jude Middle of Excellence for Influenza Analysis and Response she and her fellow analysis scientists take an annual go to to Delaware Bay. They do that to remain on high of the avian influenza viruses actively circulating within the flocks of migrating shorebirds.

Robert Webster: One of many crucial contributions that the laboratory right here at St. Jude has made was the belief that influenza in aquatic birds replicates primarily within the intestinal tract and the birds poop it out.

Younger: That’s Robert Webster. He first visited Delaware Bay in 1985. Robert started St. Jude’s influenza surveillance analysis on the bay, which has continued for the final 40 years.

Webster: Huge portions of virus [were] within the feces. And so going again to Delaware Bay we didn’t should catch the birds; we merely adopted them and took fecal samples from the seaside after they pooped.

Younger: The explanation the shorebirds are right here, pooping out quite a lot of influenza, has to do with the total moon—the primary full moon in Could, to be actual. The moon’s gravitational pull causes the excessive tides to swell, drawing in hundreds of horseshoe crabs, tussling in big mating piles alongside the waterline. And the birds know that is the beginning of the crabs’ mating season.

[CLIP: Waves crash on the beach, and birds caw.]

Younger: Standing on the shore of Norbury’s Touchdown on a blustery mid-Could afternoon, I watched this scene unfold.

Younger (tape): In order that one is connected and mating.

McKenzie: Yeah, so if she was over right here laying eggs, it might be making an attempt to fertilize the eggs, and—like proper right here: see how its claws are connected to her?

Younger: The closely armored crabs look a bit alien, and typically a bit foolish, as they draw odd tracks within the sand like uncoordinated Roombas. The traditional arthropods burrow into the sand and lay hundreds of thousands of gelatinous eggs. These eggs present the proper buffet for the migrating birds that have to bulk up earlier than their subsequent leg of their journey.

McKenzie: They’re fairly skinny although, so that they’ll be round for some time. They’re not good and fats.

Younger: And Pam wants the birds to eat as a result of she wants them to poop.

As time passes and the tide retreats, first the birds swoop in to feast, after which Pam is available in, sizzling on their path of droppings. After 15 years of doing this work Pam has developed a particular eye for hen poop. She will make a reasonably good first guess of what poop belongs to the migratory hen she’s most fascinated about.

McKenzie: Right here’s one. That’s one. It’s most likely a sanderling, like, small—you recognize, it’s small, so most likely a small hen. So this proper right here, that is so crass [laughs], however it’s like slightly log, and ruddy turnstones are inclined to drop logs, so.

Younger: Recent poop is greatest—damp however not drenched from the tide. This will increase the chances it’ll comprise stay virus that may be sequenced again on the lab. As soon as Pam spots a promising, intact poo she’ll use a swab to swiftly scoop the pattern from the sand and right into a vial.

St. Jude’s analysis heart holds a library of greater than 20,000 viruses, together with isolates of assorted iterations, or subtypes, of avian influenza collected from Delaware Bay and different areas all over the world.

Influenza subtypes are typically labeled primarily based on two particular floor proteins: hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. They symbolize the H and the N in flu names you’ve most likely seen, just like the widespread seasonal flu subtypes H1N1 and H3N2.

There are 144 H and N doable mixtures of avian influenza. And over time the St. Jude staff has detected practically each subtype in fecal samples collected at Delaware Bay. That features the subtype that’s been on our minds so much these days.

Webster: Amongst these was H5N1, certainly, however not from the European or Chinese language ones.

Younger: The actual shorebirds stopping by Delaware Bay won’t be carrying the sort of hen flu that may very well be harmful to home animals or people. However with the correct genetic mixing we might doubtlessly see outbreaks of a brand new “killer” pressure just like the one at present ripping by means of U.S. farms.

Since 2022 a lethal new pressure of H5N1 has contaminated greater than 170 million home poultry, based on the U.S. Division of Agriculture. The virus has raised our egg costs, led to the culling of hundreds of thousands of chickens and contaminated upwards of 1,000 herds of dairy cattle since March 2024.

However to essentially perceive the high-pathogenic H5N1 in our cows and chickens—and the place it would go from right here—we’ve to return in time and take a look at wild birds.

Younger: Wild birds, significantly aquatic birds, are hosts, or reservoirs, of various influenza viruses. They’re categorized as both low-pathogenic or extremely pathogenic, relying on how nicely they trigger illness in chickens. A extremely pathogenic, or “high-path,” virus, as many influenza researchers wish to name it, can wipe out a complete poultry flock in just some days.

The earliest information of high-path avian influenza are believed to come back from the late 1800s, when what was identified on the time as “fowl plague” ripped by means of poultry in Europe. Sporadic spillovers from wild to home birds have continued ever since.

Keiji Fukuda: Within the influenza subject it was clear that there was a really massive group of influenza viruses, which contaminated birds and typically contaminated animals, after which there was a a lot smaller group of human influenza viruses, which contaminated individuals.

Younger: That’s Keiji Fukuda, a retired doctor and influenza epidemiologist who labored for varied establishments, together with the College of Hong Kong, World Well being Group and the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.

Fukuda: We thought these had been separate teams of viruses and that animal influenza viruses didn’t infect people.

Younger: That modified in 1997, when a beforehand wholesome three-year-old boy in Hong Kong was hospitalized and developed a extreme pneumonia. Six days later the boy died. Influenza researchers all over the world had been referred to as upon to assist determine the precise sort of virus. Robert was considered one of them.

Webster: It couldn’t be recognized at CDC. It couldn’t be recognized in London or in Holland, the place they despatched it, they usually utilized to me for the entire vary of influenza virus reference serum, they usually recognized this virus as an H5, an H5N1. And nobody would fairly consider that this virus had killed the kid.

Younger: That shocked scientists and public well being leaders, together with molecular virologist Nancy Cox. She’s retired now however labored on the CDC from 1975 to 2014 and was main the company’s influenza department in 1997.

Nancy Cox: We didn’t count on to see high-path avian influenza viruses infecting people. We simply didn’t count on that. We hadn’t seen it earlier than. It was actually fairly out of left subject.

Younger: Questions began flying rapid-fire.

Fukuda: How might this boy have develop into contaminated?

Cox: The place’d this virus come from? May it have been a laboratory contaminant from eggs that had are available in from an contaminated farm?

Fukuda: Was this boy related to any sort of uncommon exposures?

Cox: Had been there different instances that had but to be recognized in Hong Kong?

Younger: Everybody hoped the kid was a tragic one-off case. However just a few months later their worst fears grew to become a actuality: extra individuals developed H5N1 infections.

Keiji, who was additionally with the CDC on the time and had labored with native public well being officers on the bottom on the primary case, returned to Hong Kong.

[CLIP: A reporter interviews Keiji Fukuda during a 1997 press conference: “[Is there a] risk this virus might, might develop into stronger in, by way of its effectivity?”]

[CLIP: Fukuda responds to the reporter: “Well, by stronger, you mean it could become more adapted to humans and sort of pass through? Yes, there is that possibility.”]

Younger: That was youthful Keiji again in 1997, speaking to a reporter at a press convention in Hong Kong because the outbreak was unfolding.

Fukuda: We’re coping with a virus which has remained persistent for no less than some time frame, and we don’t know: “Is that this the start of one other pandemic?” And the investigations took on an entire totally different taste. It was very critical.

Younger: Keiji says the staff finally decided that the virus seemingly unfold by means of conventional stay hen markets, also known as moist markets. As is the case in lots of Asian cultures it is not uncommon for individuals in Hong Kong to buy contemporary poultry, together with hen, duck and goose, that’s typically killed on-site.

Guided by public well being advisers, authorities officers ordered that the markets droop gross sales and get cleaned—and that farms and markets cull all poultry.

Fukuda: At the moment it was a really sort of disquieting resolution and implementation. You understand, we had by no means earlier than really helpful the culling of such a lot of birds.

Younger: Though it was a brutal resolution for farmers and sellers the tactic labored, successfully squashing an outbreak that appeared on the verge of taking off. By the top of the outbreak six individuals had died of the 18 with confirmed infections. Fortunately there was no proof of human-to-human transmission, which is essential to kick-starting a pandemic.

The genetic sequences of the virus additionally revealed genes tracing again to its probably reservoir: waterfowl, or geese. Right here’s Nancy.

Cox: What we noticed on the very starting of the H5N1 outbreak again in 1997 is that the viruses that we recognized from poultry and from individuals had been actually very, very related.

Younger: However she says so much has occurred for the reason that 1997 Hong Kong outbreak.

Cox: Now we’ve had this virus circulating globally, and what we’re seeing is a large quantity of variety, and what does that imply? It signifies that we’ve much more alternatives for the virus to develop the flexibility to contaminate people extra effectively after which finally, doubtlessly, to develop into transmissible from human to human.

Younger: As H5N1 has fanned throughout the globe over time its exercise has been a bit like a simmering volcano: often waking up in dramatic spurts, solely to go quiet once more. And every time it flares up the virus will get a brand new alternative to tweak itself—ever so barely.

Wendy Puryear: Throughout that complete 30-year time interval there continued to be ongoing evolution and shifts and adjustments within the virus.

Younger: Wendy Puryear is a scientist finding out influenza evolution and adaptation on the Cummings College of Veterinary Medication at Tufts College.

Puryear: It’s an RNA virus, and that signifies that it’s sloppy in the way in which that it replicates, so there’s continuously slight adjustments which can be being launched each time that virus goes by means of a replication cycle.

Younger: Wendy’s analysis at Tufts focuses on the surveillance of various subtypes of influenza and wildlife. She’s been watching with rising unease how adjustments, or mutations, are creating an unlimited variety of H5N1 viruses—together with ones that is perhaps higher at infecting totally different animals.

Puryear: Previous to the COVID pandemic the factor that many people had been very involved can be the following pandemic of huge influence on human well being was influenza. So that is one which we’ve been nervous about for a very long time.

Younger: Wendy says H5N1 retains hitting mutation milestones which can be getting too shut for consolation.

Puryear: We maintain going additional down that street of “no less than it hasn’t.”

“A minimum of it hadn’t gone into quite a lot of wild animals and was disseminating across the globe.”

Younger: Now lineages of the virus have been detected in animals in practically each continent. H5N1 has established itself in home poultry in varied international locations in Asia, the Center East, the Americas, Africa and Europe.

And [starting] just a few years in the past the variety of hen species carrying H5N1 has ballooned. Greater than 500 totally different avian species, starting from seabirds to songbirds, have examined constructive for H5N1, based on the Meals and Agriculture Group of the United Nations.

Puryear: “Effectively, now it’s. Effectively, no less than it wasn’t going into mammals.”

Younger: Then round 2020 and 2021 extremely pathogenic H5N1 began to contaminate totally different mammals, thus far affecting greater than 90 totally different species in whole, together with coyotes, minks, opossums, skunks and rodents.

The virus had beforehand been discovered within the occasional fox or tiger, usually predators which may’ve eaten an contaminated wild hen. However the listing of newly contaminated mammal species is rising in a means that hasn’t been seen earlier than.

Pruyear: “A minimum of there wasn’t proof of mammal-to-mammal transmission.” Effectively, then we had that in marine mammals in South America.

Younger: In 2022 and 2023 the virus unfold amongst varied marine animals alongside the coast of Peru and Chile, killing greater than 30,000 sea lions. It occurred so quickly that scientists suspected it should have traveled straight between animals.

The virus made its means round to the Atlantic coast. Teams of dolphins, porpoises and otters had been additionally contaminated.

Puryear: “Effectively, no less than it’s not in a context that we’re in shut proximity between people and people mammals.” Effectively, now it’s in dairy cattle.

Younger: Nobody anticipated the virus to hit U.S. dairy cows. The way it received onto farms within the first place remains to be a little bit of a thriller; you’ll hear much more about that within the subsequent episode of this three-part collection. However it’s vital to say that scientists do have a powerful hunch about how the virus made that soar—and also you most likely guessed it: wild birds.

Louise Moncla: There’s this complete variety of low-path viruses that don’t actually trigger as many issues that flow into endemically in these wild birds in North America.

Younger: That’s Louise Moncla. She’s a pathobiologist main a lab on the College of Pennsylvania that’s constructing a household tree of avian influenza viruses.

Moncla: By way of this course of referred to as reassortment this incurring sort of new virus that entered began mixing with these viruses, and so we now have this numerous combination of viruses form of circulating in wild birds, ensuing within the emergence of those new genotypes …

Younger: New genotypes, or distinctive genetic profiles, just like the high-path H5N1 that scientists assume began infecting dairy cows. This genetic mixing, or reassortment of various influenza viruses, happens after they co-infect one host: a hen, an animal or, worse, a human. That opens up the window for genetic data to be exchanged.

Right here’s Wendy once more to unpack a little bit of what Louise mentioned.

Puryear: Not solely do you might have this common evolution that occurs with the virus being sloppy in the way it replicates, however the truth that it has its genome on separate items, its genetic data is definitely—these genes are on separate chunks of, of RNA, and that signifies that it will possibly take an entire gene and swap it out with a distinct type of influenza, so that offers an entire new kinda Frankenstein model of the virus that may then transfer ahead.

Younger: And this technique of virus information swapping can doubtlessly spiral into one thing a lot larger—and deadlier.

Right here’s Louise once more.

Moncla: Reassortment is a extremely vital course of for influenza evolution as a result of it has led to each previous pandemic that we learn about. So we often get influenza pandemics when viruses from two totally different species combine by way of reassortment and [that] leads to a virus for which a bunch inhabitants like people doesn’t have any prior immunity.

Younger: However these viral swap meets go away footprints—clues that assist researchers like Wendy and Louise monitor influenza evolution by means of time and house. Louise’s flu household tree fashions, for example, permit for real-time monitoring of noteworthy genetic adjustments in H5N1. The tree’s branches present small shifts from the virus’s sloppy replica and the large evolutionary leaps from reassortment.

Moncla: In the event you pattern and sequence these viral genomes, you should use these mutations to hyperlink instances collectively. So these genomes present this good little map of how this virus has been transferring between totally different host species or populations or geographic areas.

Younger: And wild birds assist paint an image of the place the virus is perhaps now and the place it would go subsequent. These feathered virus carriers have successfully moved influenza all over the world and into our domesticated animals.

However Louise, Wendy, Nancy, Keiji and people at St. Jude are all fast to say that migrating birds and wildlife shouldn’t be blamed for H5N1’s present stronghold—it’s the way in which that people monitor and reply to the state of affairs.

Moncla: Now that these viruses are actually being pushed by transmission of untamed birds we have to perceive how these viruses evolve in wild birds so much higher. And so one thing I’m actually hoping continues to occur is surveillance in wild birds. You understand, so with out this type of steady surveillance effort in wild birds we wouldn’t have been in a position to perceive the outbreak in dairy cattle or these human spillovers and the place they’re coming from.

Younger: Wild birds can’t be stopped, however they are often watched—similar to how the St. Jude group is surveying the shorebirds at Delaware Bay, 12 months after 12 months.

[CLIP: Birds caw.]

Younger: Again in Delaware Bay, armed with vials of hen poop and a compact scientific camper van, one other virus hunter is doing precisely that.

Lisa Kercher: My title is Lisa Kercher. I’m the director of laboratory operations for the Webby Lab group at St. Jude Youngsters’s Analysis Hospital, which is a—our lab group is a big influenza analysis laboratory.

Younger (tape): Nice, and inform us the place we’re proper now.

Kercher: Sure, we’re sitting in a 19-foot toy hauler that may be a trailer camper that has been constructed out to work as a molecular biology lab.

Younger: Lisa lives half time in her truck and camper, residing and sleeping alongside fastidiously saved poop samples preserved in chilly liquid nitrogen. The house is a comfy match for the 2 of us and her candy English Labrador retriever, Jax.

Like quite a lot of campers it’s received a small kitchen, rest room and a really snug mattress, based on Lisa, however she’s personalized the house with a makeshift lab bench.

Kercher: I’ve like already shattered the door as soon as and needed to have it changed.

Younger (tape): No…!

Younger: Her working space is stocked with protecting gear, reagents, pipettes, nicely plates and a wide range of miniature tools, together with a PCR machine that may rapidly amplify DNA from samples Pam collected the day earlier than.

Kercher: It could then instantly run a PCR for flu and for H5, and I do know on my little laptop computer right here if that’s constructive inside about an hour. And so by the point I’m driving dwelling I’ve the prevalence of the flu that was in these shorebirds for the time I used to be right here. So it’s a terrific first step.

Younger: At that time in website accumulating she had processed 250 fecal samples. By the top of the week the staff can have collected 1,000. Later the samples will likely be transported to St. Jude’s essential labs in Tennessee to confirm Lisa’s preliminary readings.

Earlier than she began doing this real-time surveillance work two years in the past, the staff wouldn’t know what avian influenza subtypes they’d on their arms till about six months after the pattern collections.

Kercher: It’s extremely onerous to do epidemiology of how the virus is transferring and monitoring once you spend six months ready for the sequence to come back out of a nationwide lab or any massive lab. It is simply onerous logistically to then backtrack and determine that out. You are able to do it, however it’s often a 12 months later. After which you’re often confronted with an entire totally different virus by that point. So the purpose of doing it quicker is as a way to do danger evaluation in additional actual time.

Younger: But when Lisa desires to be actually quick, she wants extra knowledge. The poo samples from the seaside are helpful sources of viral sequences, however they will’t supply the total flu image.

Kercher: So once you get a flu virus from a fecal pattern it’s a must to give it a reputation, it’s a must to identical say the species that it got here from. How are you aware?

Younger: Like fixing any thriller the researchers need to reply the large whodunit—or on this case, who-dung-it.

Understanding the precise hen species that pooed the poo requires extra testing and extra time, and it’s not one thing that she will be able to do from contained in the camper lab. That’s why Lisa is teaming up with native wildlife ecologists. Enter Larry Niles and his bird-catching cannon.

Younger (tape): So what do we’ve right here at present? What, what are we taking a look at with the, the little squeaking noises we’ve received occurring?

Larry Niles: Most of these noises are from the sanderling. We caught nearly 100 sanderlings.

Younger (tape): Wow.

Niles: We caught a handful of [red] knots and ruddy turnstones.

Younger: The day earlier than visiting the cell lab I used to be on the seaside with Lisa and Larry. He co-leads the Delaware Bay Shorebird Venture with Wildlife Restoration Partnerships. Larry has been catching shorebirds right here as a part of his conservation work for the final 29 years. And sure, his group makes use of one thing referred to as a cannon internet to nab these birds as a result of …

Niles: See, shorebirds very troublesome to catch as a result of they’re onerous to get near as a result of they’re used to being out on flats like sand flats. As we speak we used two cannon, and see, the benefit of that’s: the online, which is about 40 ft [roughly 12 meters] lengthy, once we hook it as much as the cannons, that internet goes so quick that it will get over the birds earlier than they’ve the time to react.

Younger: The birds are quickly corralled in cloth-covered packing containers, ready for Larry and the opposite researchers and volunteers to softly pull them out to gather varied knowledge factors. They’ll measure the birds’ wings and beaks, weigh them and take a blood and feather pattern earlier than they’re launched again to the horseshoe-crab-egg feast on the seaside.

And although Larry has his personal analysis to do on the ecology of the birds—their well being, their inhabitants numbers and what would possibly threaten these issues—he says it’s an actual bonus to have virus detectives like Pam and Lisa to work with, facet by facet.

Niles: I’m not a virologist; I’m an ecologist. However I perceive the ecology of issues, and I feel melding the ecology of birds with the ecology of those viruses, that’s our half—working with the virologists in order that collectively we might determine it out.

Younger: For Lisa, having access to the shorebirds straight unlocks all kinds of essential data.

Kercher: So, once you’re getting the samples straight from the birds you then already know the species, in order that simply makes it slightly bit simpler.

Younger: And it’s alongside these migratory routes, referred to as flyways, the place the birds, the ecologists and the virologists with camper labs want to satisfy.

Kercher: When the avian virus jumps right into a mammal it has the chance to mutate into changing into extra mammalianlike, and that’s the reason we’re so involved within the flyway.

Younger: There are 4 essential flyways, [also] referred to as avian superhighways, that run by means of North America. Since getting her cell lab up and working Lisa has pushed it hundreds of miles up and down these flyways to websites in Alberta, Canada, and northwest Tennessee. However these avian superhighways have additionally develop into more and more regarding for H5N1.

Kercher: These birds are carrying this virus in higher numbers and in heaps extra areas the place there’s potential for spillover into home poultry farms. And naturally, this occurred within the dairy farms—it spilled over into the cattle, so this virus is now very prevalent throughout North America. However the flyways are vital as a result of the birds that carry it are transferring rapidly down the flyway in a really brief time frame, and you’ve got quite a lot of alternative for spillover there.

Younger: Lisa says that velocity issues for a quickly altering virus like H5N1. She might think about her cell lab getting scaled up into a big biosurveillance community: a number of satellite tv for pc labs dotted up and down all of the flyways, relaying genetic sequences to different influenza trackers like Louise and Wendy but additionally to farmers on the bottom making an attempt to maintain their chickens and cows wholesome.

Kercher: Wouldn’t it’s nice if the farmer had a method to go on his pc and take a look at a dashboard and say, “Wow, I ponder the place the flu is?” They should know the place it’s circulating within the wild birds. And in the event that they knew the place it was forward of time—or no less than the place it was coming from—they might have a possibility, in the event that they selected, to up their biosecurity slightly bit.

Younger: Till then virus detectors like Pam and Lisa proceed to maintain a watchful eye on the shocking twists and turns of H5N1, trying to the birds and the clues they go away behind.

Kercher: We’ll by no means meet up with Mom Nature. We’re by no means gonna meet up with the virus and the way it mutates. But when we will get nearer and method it extra, you’ll be able to then search for mutations, a lot faster issues that make the virus proof against antivirals or issues that make it extra mammalian adaptable. You’ll wanna know that sooner somewhat than later.

Feltman: That’s all for at present’s episode, however there’s heaps extra to come back. Tune in on Wednesday for half two of our particular collection on hen flu, which explores how avian influenza made its unprecedented leap into cattle.

Science Shortly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, together with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and hosted by Lauren Younger and edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our present. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Particular due to Michael Sheffield at St. Jude; the volunteers and collaborators with Wildlife Restoration Partnerships; and Kimberly Lau, Dean Visser and Jeanna Bryner at Scientific American. Subscribe to Scientific American for extra up-to-date and in-depth science information.

For Scientific American’s Science Shortly, I’m Rachel Feltman. See you subsequent time!