'Bleak' future for seals decimated by bird flu, scientists warn

Paris: The world s largest species of seal has been devastated by bird flu, which has wiped out half of all breeding females at a key wildlife haven n...

Paris: The world's largest species of seal has been devastated by bird flu, which has wiped out half of all breeding females at a key wildlife haven near Antarctica, scientists warned Thursday.

The remote island of South Georgia is the home of a majority of all southern elephant seals. Males of these blubbery giants can grow up to two meters (six feet seven inches) long, weigh nearly four tons (8,800 pounds) -- and have a distinctive elephant-trunk-like proboscis on their face that earned the mammals their name.

Bird flu arrived on South Georgia in 2023 during an outbreak that has seen the virus spread across the world like never before, killing millions of birds and infecting many mammals, including several humans.

Earlier this year, scientists warned that bird flu had sparked the worst die-off on record for southern elephant seals when it spread among a population on Argentina's coast in 2023.

In a study published in the journal Communications Biology on Thursday, a UK team of researchers gave the first estimate for how hard South Georgia's seals have been hit.