Stress disease kills Australia’s koalas

You might remem­ber my post on Sam the Koala, who died from com­pli­ca­tions of being infected my chlamy­dia. Although I wrote that it infects about half the koala pop­u­la­tion, it’s pos­si­bly as high as 90%. Very much like the var­i­ous her­pes viruses that affect humans, chlamy­dia in koalas is nor­mally not much of an issue. But when fac­ing stress, as koalas are due to shrink­ing habi­tat, the dis­ease can run out of con­trol. The Aus­tralian fed­eral gov­ern­ment is on the verge of declar­ing koalas as endan­gered which should help focus efforts.

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