A University of Pretoria (UP) professor of zoology was part of a team that recently published a study that reveals that tiny hummingbirds living in the Andes Mountains in Peru drop their body temperature from 40°C to 3.3°C, near freezing point, to survive bitterly cold nights.
The University of Pretoria (UP) has joined forces with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to successfully develop a vaccine against avian influenza using tobacco plants, bypassing the many biosafety risks involved with using traditional live vaccine viruses.
Prof Andrew McKechnie of the Department of Zoology and Entomology was recently awarded the South African Research Chair in Conservation Physiology.
The drug known as carprofen, which was found to be toxic to vultures, belongs to the same family of drugs as diclofenac and meloxicam.
University of Pretoria researchers are working with the poultry industry and the National Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) to contain the current bird flu outbreak in South Africa.
While political leaders deny climate change, mass deaths of desert birds resulting from escalating temperatures are becoming a frequent occurrence.
Climate change in southern Africa will have far-reaching effects on the activities and well-being of humans.
This was one of the fundamental questions posed at the recent official opening of the Poultry Nutrition and Management Research Facility on the University's Experimental Farm.
Avian influenza (AI) is an infectious viral respiratory disease that normally affects birds. However, due to the ability of the virus to mutate and its zoonotic pandemic potential, cases of human and other mammalian infections are becoming increasingly frequent.
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