If you\u2019re golfing in Florida this winter, resist the urge to feed the friendly white ibises congregating around the water hazards\u2014they might just give you salmonella.<\/p>\n
The birds, native to Florida\u2019s dwindling wetlands, have been moving to urban golf courses and parks. There they come into close contact with people\u2014even being hand-fed in some cases\u2014and leave their droppings on benches and buildings. Each point of contact has the potential to infect people.<\/p>\n
Florida has between 5,000 and 6,000 cases of salmonella poisoning a year. The majority are not associated with food-borne outbreaks, and the most significant sources have yet to be identified. Wild birds are frequent carriers of salmonella bacteria, so Sonia Hernandez, a wildlife disease researcher at the University of Georgia, wondered whether the white ibises might be contributing to the toll.<\/p>\n
Hernandez and her colleagues tested the droppings of birds in both urban areas and at nesting sites in the wetlands, and found that 13 percent of adult birds and 35 percent of nestlings carried salmonella\u2014a surprisingly high number given the birds showed no clinical symptoms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t expect to see such a high prevalence in healthy birds,\u201d says Hernandez.<\/p>\n
They identified a large number of different strains of salmonella in the ibises, of which almost half matched strains known to affect people. A third of the identified strains were in the top 20 of concern for people in the years in which the study was conducted. Also, the scientists found that the prevalence of salmonella was actually higher in urban birds than those living in the wetlands, and the strains found in urban areas were more likely to be ones that matched human cases.<\/p>\n
The researchers suspect that the birds pick up the salmonella bacteria from the soil, water, or other birds\u2019\u00a0feces while foraging for food on golf courses or in parks, and pass it on to people through their droppings. While conducting their study, the researchers frequently saw people sitting or leaning on surfaces covered in ibis feces. But the salmonella is not just dangerous to humans. The birds can bring it back to their nesting sites and infect their young, which can cause large-scale die-offs.<\/p>\n