tagged w/ Necropsies
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CNN...
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At least 20 dolphins found dead in Cape Cod area
By Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley, CNN
updated 1:26 AM EST, Tue January 17, 2012
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Between 40 and 50 dolphins have been found stranded close to shore near Cape Cod since Thursday.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Experts are not sure why the dolphins are washing up
19 stranded dolphins have been saved
Dolphins have been found stranded close to shore since Thursday
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(CNN) -- At least 20 dolphins have died after washing up near several Cape Cod towns, an International Fund for Animal Welfare spokeswoman said Monday.
Between 40 and 50 common and Atlantic white-sided dolphins have been found stranded close to the shore since Thursday, and the number will likely rise, said IFAW spokeswoman Kerry Branon. Some animals were released Monday near Provincetown, bringing the total number of animals saved to 19.
"It may not sound like a high success rate, but when you consider that 27 were alive when they washed up, I think we're doing pretty well." The remaining eight that were stranded alive died.
Stranded living animals are given full health assessments, including ultrasounds and hearing tests; dead animals are given CT scans and necropsies, Branon said. Five released dolphins have been equipped with satellite tags on their dorsal fins to track their location and to see if they're surviving.
Despite January-April being "high season" for dolphin stranding near Cape Cod, IFAW experts aren't exactly sure why so many dolphins are appearing now.
One theory is that the animals get caught in currents when they come close to land to feed. Another theory is that, as social animals, if one dolphin is sick or injured, the whole group will stay with that animal. Finally, the topography of Cape Cod may create areas where the dolphins can get stuck.
Katie Moore, a Cape Cod dolphin rescue veteran of 15 years, says that this is only the second time she has seen this many dolphins washing ashore.
"Sometimes they come up one at a time, other times we see them 10 at a time," said Moore, manager of IFAW's rescue team.
The six-member rescue team is on-call 24/7 and will continue searching this week.
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At least 20 dolphins found dead in Cape Cod area
By Dominique... more
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ButterballAbuse.com...
Mercy For Animals....
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Butterball has become synonymous with turkey. But how do the millions of turkeys who end up in the grocery store, or served at restaurants, under the Butterball brand, really live and die?
A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation reveals the truth: extreme cruelty and violence is the harsh reality for birds on Butterball's factory farms.
Between November and December of 2011, an MFA undercover investigator documented a pattern of shocking abuse and neglect at a Butterball turkey semen collection facility in Shannon, North Carolina.
Hidden-camera footage taken at Butterball reveals:
Workers violently kicking and stomping on birds, dragging them by their fragile wings and necks, and maliciously throwing turkeys onto the ground or into transport trucks in full view of company management;
Employees bashing in the heads of live birds with metal bars, leaving many to slowly suffer and die from their injuries;
Turkeys covered in flies, living in their own waste, with some unable to access food or water and suffering from severe feather loss
Birds suffering from serious untreated illnesses and injuries, including open sores, infections, rotting eyes, and broken bones; and
Severely injured turkeys, unable to stand up or walk, left to die without any veterinary care, because treating sick or injured birds was too costly and time consuming, as the farm manager explained to MFA's investigator.
After viewing the undercover footage, Dr. Sara Shields, research scientist, poultry specialist and consultant in animal welfare, said, "Turkeys are fully capable of feeling pain, fear, stress and of suffering, and the way they are treated in the video is clearly abusive."
Dr. Debra Teachout, a practicing veterinarian with experience in farmed-animal welfare, agrees, stating, "The birds are not living a life remotely worth living. Their world is full of fear, distress, pain, injury and illness as witnessed by this video. A culture of blatant and severe animal mistreatment has been allowed to flourish unchecked, and for that reason, this facility should be shut down immediately."
Following the investigation, MFA immediately went to law enforcement with extensive video footage and a detailed legal complaint outlining the routine violence and cruelty documented by the investigator at this Butterball facility. On Thursday, December 29, state law enforcement officials obtained a warrant and raided the facility on grounds of cruelty to animals.
Unfortunately, the lives of turkeys in Butterball's factory farms are short, brutal and filled with fear, violence and prolonged suffering. While wild turkeys are sleek, agile and able to fly, Butterball's turkeys have been selectively bred to grow so large, so quickly, that many of them suffer from painful bone defects, hip joint lesions, crippling foot and leg deformities, and fatal heart attacks.
This genetic manipulation creates birds that are so large they cannot even reproduce naturally, meaning that artificial semen collection and insemination have become the sole means of turkey reproduction at Butterball facilities.
Even though domestic turkeys have been genetically manipulated for enormous growth, these birds still retain their gentle, inquisitive and social natures. Oregon State University poultry scientist Dr. Tom Savage says that turkeys are "smart animals with personality and character, and keen awareness of their surroundings." In fact, animal behaviorists, veterinarians, and scientists now agree that turkeys are sensitive and intelligent animals with their own unique personalities, much like the dogs and cats we all know and love.
While MFA works to expose and end animal abuse at Butterball and other giants of the meat, dairy and egg industry, consumers can help prevent the needless suffering of turkeys and other animals by adopting a compassionate vegan diet.
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http://a.abcnews.com/images/Blotter/ht_butterball_abuse_tk_111228_wg.jpg
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Click here to view undercover video:
http://www.butterballabuse.com
.ButterballAbuse.com...
Mercy For Animals....
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Butterball has become... more
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Los Angeles Times...
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Southern California -- this just in
Nearly 60 animals seized at 'death trap' in rural San Diego County
December 2, 2011 | 4:51 pm
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Fifty-eight animals in the rural community of Campo were seized Friday by San Diego County sheriff's deputies and animal services officers in a raid on a small ranch that one animal services officer called a "death trap."
The animals included goats, sheep, llamas, cattle and horses. Many of the animals were sick, were on the verge of starvation and had overgrown hooves, investigators said.
On Nov. 9, animal control officers had found nine dead goats and a dead llama on the same property. Necropsies determined that the animals had probably died of starvation.
The owners were given a warning about the remaining animals but apparently were not following through on their promises to provide better feed and care, according to Lt. Dan DeSousa of the county Department of Animal Services.
"We were not going to allow these animals to remain and suffer the same fate as the others," DeSousa said.
The animals were taken to a county-run facility in Bonita. Investigators are gathering evidence and will present a report to the district attorney about possible animal cruelty charges against the property owners, DeSousa said.
Deputies and investigators allowed several dogs, several chickens and a pig to remain. "But we'll be monitoring to see how they are doing," DeSousa said.
Campo is an hour east of downtown San Diego. The owners were not home at the time of the raid.
.Los Angeles Times...
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Southern California -- this just in
Nearly 60... more
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Click on link to watch video
PART ONE...
Fungus sweeps across the country, killing bats
Biologists believe the long-range consequences could be dire, but the remedies could be just as dangerous.
By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
April 3, 2011
Reporting from Ruidoso, N.M.—
More than 100 hibernating bats hang from the vaulted ceiling of a chilly gallery in central New Mexico's Fort Stanton Cave, seemingly unaware of the lights from helmet lanterns sweeping over their gargoyle-like faces.
The mood is heavy with anxiety as biologists Marikay Ramsey and Debbie Buecher search for signs of white-nose syndrome, a novel, infectious and lethal cold-loving fungus that digests the skin and wings of hibernating bats and smudges their muzzles with a powdery white growth.
"These bats look fine, which is a relief," U.S. Bureau of Land Management endangered animal specialist Ramsey said as she prepared to log the humidity and temperature of the cave in a hand-held computer. "But we still worry that the disease could hit New Mexico this winter or the next. If that happens, we may have to close every cave and abandoned mine in the state."
Biologists across the nation are facing a similarly grim scenario. Since it was discovered in New York four years ago, the fungus has swept across 17 states as far west as Oklahoma, killing a million bats. A majority of the dead were little brown bats, which have lost an estimated 20% of their population in the northeastern United States over the last four years. The fungus seems to prefer the 25 species of hibernating bats, but each of the 45 species of bats in the United States and Canada may be susceptible to white-nose syndrome.
Geomyces destructans was first documented in 2007 in New York's Howe Caverns, commercial attraction visited by thousands of tourists from around the world each year. As the disease began to spread, researchers learned that a similar fungal growth had long been seen on the faces and wings of hibernating bats in Europe.
Now scientists are scrambling to figure out whether the fungus was introduced by a bat or a caver from Europe. If it is from Europe, they wonder, has the fungus killed bats there or have they adapted to living with the pathogen? Or did the fungus already live in North America but recently mutate to become the virulent wildlife disease?
"It is unbelievably sad and disheartening, and we can't seem to move fast enough to get ahead of it," said U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist LeAnn White. "We may be looking at phenomenal losses across the country with unknown ecological consequences."
Bats have always existed at close to the numbers seen prior to the arrival of white-nose syndrome, feasting on such night-flying insects as mosquitoes, which transmit West Nile virus, and agricultural pests damaging to cotton and corn crops. They also pollinate plants, including the saguaro cactus. "We don't know what will happen if they disappear," said USGS biologist Paul Cryan. A recent study published in Science estimates that the value of pest control provided by bats each year is at least $3.7 billion nationwide.
As the syndrome continues to spread westward along migratory flyways, Thomas Kunz and Jonathan Reichard of Boston University's Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology have urged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the little brown bat, one of the most common mammals in the United States, as endangered.
The listing would provide the greatest legal protections — on both public and private lands — for the chocolate-colored, mouse-sized insectivore which, the biologists are virtually certain, is facing regional extirpation in the northeastern United States within 15 years.
Greg Turner, an endangered animal specialist for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, knows the sickening feeling of discovering hundreds of carcasses of these nocturnal animals in caves he has monitored for decades. "There are a million bats in Pennsylvania alone, and half of them are dead," he said. "I'd be surprised if the disease hasn't taken up half the nation by the end of this winter."
Hibernation, Turner pointed out, is essential for the survival of individual bats during a portion of the year when there are no insects to eat. It is also why the disease has been so successful. During hibernation, a bat's body temperature drops to the ideal range for growth of the fungus.
"A mammalian fungus would be expected to have a restriction for cold growth because mammals require warmth, but that's where the novelty of this fungus comes in," said Carol Meteyer, a pathologist with the geological survey's National Wildlife Health Center. "It occurs in caves and requires cold temperatures, and when a bat hibernates, it becomes the temperature of its environment."
And because a bat's immune system is suppressed during hibernation, its body does not fight off the fungus.
"So when I look at bat tissue under the microscope," said Meteyer, "there are no signs of inflammatory response to defend the body from the infection. The body is not recognizing it as foreign."
CONTINUED...
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IMPORTANT NOTE FROM EthicalVegan: I see that comments and replies have "cut apart" Parts One and Two. So -- and because this is that important -- please scroll down to see Part Two of this article.Click on link to watch video
PART ONE...
Fungus sweeps across the country,... more
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Dolphins die after underwater Navy training exercise near San Diego
Three of the marine mammals were found dead this month during explosives training near the coast. The long-beaked common dolphins showed injuries consistent with blast trauma.
Genetic testing showed that the dead dolphins were long-beaked common dolphins, like these off San Pedro. (Pete Thomas, Los Angeles Times / March 25, 2011)
By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times
March 26, 2011
Three dolphins died this month during a Navy training exercise using underwater explosives near the San Diego County coast, authorities said Friday.
Scientists have yet to officially determine what caused the deaths at the Silver Strand Training Complex near Coronado, but examinations of the animals showed injuries consistent with blast trauma.
The unit conducting the underwater training exercises March 4 had scanned the area and spotted no marine mammals before starting a countdown to detonate the explosives about 10:45 a.m., said Cmdr. Greg Hicks, spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Third Fleet.
"They saw the dolphins before the explosives went off, but it came so late it would have put humans at risk to stop the process," he said. "After the detonation, despite all required protective actions taken to avoid marine mammal impacts, three dolphins were found dead in the area."
After the explosion, government biologists retrieved the carcasses and took them to a veterinary lab at SeaWorld to conduct necropsies.
Genetic testing showed that the animals were long-beaked common dolphins, said Sarah Wilkin, a marine mammal biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is responsible for investigating sick, injured and dead marine mammals.
Samples from the carcasses are being analyzed to rule out other factors that could have contributed to the deaths, such as disease or poisoning.
Wilkin said the deaths should not have a significant impact on the species' population. There are an estimated 15,000 long-beaked common dolphins along the California coast. While protected under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, the species is not considered threatened or endangered.
Conservationists have wrangled with the Navy in the past about military operations, but experts said they knew of no previous incidents in the region of dolphin fatalities involving explosives.
Most of the controversy over the effects of military training on marine life in recent years has centered on sonar.
Environmentalists have argued that the Navy's sonar exercises can deafen and even kill whales and other marine life. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the military in 2008.
The Navy has been working with the National Marine Fisheries Service on permits and protocols for exercises at the Silver Strand facility, Wilkin said.
Environmental groups said the dolphin deaths show that the military needs to take further precautions to protect marine life from explosives.
"It underscores that the Navy trains with a lot of technology that is harmful to the marine environment, said Michael Jasny, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It is therefore imperative that it take every available step to prevent harm."
After learning of the deaths this week, Jasny wrote a letter to the Navy asking for a public investigation into the incident and for the suspension of similar explosives exercises until the chain of events is understood.
The Navy said the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit involved in the incident "conducted the underwater training in accordance with all operational training and safety guidelines as well as observed all protective measures and assessment protocols and monitoring of the area."
"Obviously, this was a very unfortunate incident," Hicks said.
A Navy investigation, he said, is underway to determine what went wrong and whether further measures may be required to protect marine mammals in future training exercises.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is also looking into whether two additional long-beaked common dolphins that washed ashore dead in La Jolla and Oceanside the following week are connected to explosives training exercises.Dolphins die after underwater Navy training exercise near San Diego
Three of the... more
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Official: No foul play in massive fish kill in California harbor
By Michael Martinez, CNN
March 8, 2011 4:29 p.m. EST
Los Angeles (CNN) -- A southern California fish kill that authorities identified as more than a million sardines is not the result of any environmental foul play but rather is the product of natural forces, officials said Tuesday.
Floating fish were so pervasive in King Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach, California, that some moored boats seemed surrounded not by water but by the lifeless aquatic animals a foot deep.
"All evidence points to oxygen deprivation as cause of death," California Department of Fish and Game spokesman Andrew Hughan told CNN.
"There is no oil sheen, nor is there a chemical sheen," Hughan said.
Redondo Beach Police Sgt. Phil Keenan said authorities are confident of test results showing that oxygen deprivation caused the massive fish kill because the other part of the sardine school is alive and well in the mouth of the harbor.
Keenan said the floating fish are a foot deep, and clean-up boats will spend the next few days removing the silvery animals by net.
"Part of the sardine school is out in the channel of the harbor and they're doing fine," Keenan told CNN. "For some reason, this large school of sardines got chased into the harbor -- and they died off."
Authorities said that the sardines likely sought calm waters inside the 1,400-vessel marina Monday evening when winds were gusting up to 45 mph and the waters were rough.
"They like to follow each other and it only takes one to come in before the others follow," Brent Scheiwe, program director of the SEA Lab, a hands-on coastal science education center in Redondo Beach, told reporters at a press conference Tuesday.
"The fish found these back areas of the harbor, and then the oxygen depletion would have occurred... If it's rough out there, they will stay here in the waters where it's more sheltered," Scheiwe said.
"There is a risk of the same thing happening tonight," he added.
The harbor's algae may have contributed to the lack of oxygen, and then when the fish started dying, the resulting bacteria also consumed oxygen, Scheiwe said.
Once the fish got into the harbor, "they couldn't get out," said Redondo Beach Fire Chief Dan Madrigal.
About the extraordinary number of dead fish, Hughan stated that "while it is unusual, it is not unprecedented. This is natural selection."
Hughan said a necropsy, including a chemical analysis, will be performed on some of the dead fish.
In what officials described as $100,000 clean-up effort, crews had been moving the dead fish into the open ocean to let them decompose naturally, but they decided on a more efficient method of removing the fish from the marina and having them sent to be recycled for fertilizer, Madrigal told reporters.
Photo: Millions of dead anchovies float to surface in Redondo Beach
Older Article Today...
March 8th, 2011
01:35 PM ET
Officials say millions of the pungent, oily fish are covering the sea bottom in the harbor. They began rising to the surface Tuesday morning, the Daily Breeze in Torrance, outside Los Angeles, reported.
“We need to get rid of them,” Sgt. Phil Keenan of the Redondo Beach Police Department told the paper. “This is going to create a terrible pollution and public health issue if we don't.”
Fire, police and public works officials have yet to cite a definite cause, but Keenan said the fish appear to have died from lack of oxygen.
There were no red tides (oxygen-depleting algae blooms) or other obvious phenomena that could have caused the mass deaths, the paper reported.
“Yesterday, everything looked absolutely normal,” Walter Waite, who lives at the harbor, told the newspaper. “This morning when I got up, there were millions and millions of them floating everywhere.”
The temperature in Southern California is expected to climb into the 70s Tuesday, exacerbating the urgency of removing the scads of 6-inch fish scattered throughout the harbor.
http://media.trb.com/media/photo/2011-03/59953114.jpg
SCROLL DOWN FOR LATEST UPDATESOfficial: No foul play in massive fish kill in California harbor
By Michael Martinez,... more
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Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines at 10 times the normal rate of stillborn and infant deaths, researchers are finding.
The Sun Herald has learned that 17 young dolphins, either aborted before they reached maturity or dead soon after birth, have been collected along the shorelines.
The Institute of Marine Mammal Studies performed necropsies, animal autopsies, on two of the babies today.
Moby Solangi, director of the institute, called the high number of deaths an anomaly and told the Sun Herald that it is significant, especially in light of the BP oil spill throughout the spring and summer last year when millions of barrels of crude oil containing toxins and carcinogens spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil worked its way into the Mississippi and Chandeleur sounds and other bays and shallow waters where dolphins breed and give birth.
This is the first birthing season for dolphins since the spill.
Dolphins breed in the spring and carry their young for 11 to 12 months, Solangi said.
Typically in January and February, there are one or two babies per month found in Mississippi and Alabama, then the birthing season goes into full swing in March and April.
“For some reason, they’ve started aborting or they were dead before they were born,” Solangi said. “The average is one or two a month. This year we have 17 and February isn’t even over yet.”
Deaths in the adult dolphin population rose in the year of the oil spill from a norm of about 30 to 89, Solangi said.
Solangi is gathering tissue and organs for a thorough forensic study of the infant deaths and is cautious about drawing conclusions until the data is in, probably within a couple of weeks.
“We shouldn’t really jump to any conclusions until we get some results,” Solangi said. “But this is more than just a coincidence.”
The institute told the Sun Herald that it has collected 14 infant dolphins in the last two weeks and three in Mississippi today.
The institute has done a number of the autopsies, but no trend has emerged yet.
“Of the two calves on the table today, one appears to have had trauma,” Solangi said. “It was a very small calf.”
But he said that trauma to the body often occurs after a baby has died because the mother or other dolphins try to get the baby to breathe.
“I don’t believe the calf died because something hit it,” Solangi said.
“Some of the trauma you see in a baby dolphin death is the result of the mother or other animals around it trying to get it back. They don’t realize it’s dead until sometime later,” he said.
Read more: http://www.sunherald.com/2011/02/20/2881134/baby-dolphin-deaths-spike-on-gulf.html#ixzz1EeAK3bMUBaby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi... more
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Dead birds in Sweden killed by 'external blows'
By the CNN Wires Staff
January 5, 2011 10:11 p.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* A large number of dead birds were found in Swedish city of Falkoping
* Autopsies indicate the birds died from "external blows"
* Dead birds have been found in two U.S. towns over the last week
(CNN) -- A large number of dead birds were found in the city of Falkoping, Sweden, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, according to a press release on the website of the Swedish National Veterinary Institute.
Autopsies were performed on five of the birds. The institute said they died due to "sudden, hard external blows," according to the press release. They had no signs of infection or other illnesses, and there were no external signs indicating what killed them.
"We have determined that the birds have died from severe internal bleedings caused by external blows," said the Institute's Marianne Elvander.
A similar unusual incident occurred in Arkansas on New Year's Eve. Thousands of red-winged blackbirds and starlings were found dead over a square-mile area in the town of Beebe.
In a separate incident, some 500 red-winged blackbirds, starlings and sparrows were found dead Monday morning in the southern Louisiana community of Labarre.Dead birds in Sweden killed by 'external blows'
By the CNN Wires Staff... more
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Hundreds of penguins wash up on Brazilian coast
Also, numerous other sea birds, five dolphins and three giant sea turtles
By Mariano Castillo, CNN
July 22, 2010 11:19 a.m. EDT
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(CNN) -- Biologists suspect that unusually cold waters off the coast of Brazil were responsible for the deaths of more than 550 penguins that washed up on shore in the past 10 days.
Since July 11, about 556 dead penguins have appeared on beaches, Thiago do Nascimento, a biologist at the Peruibe Aquarium, told CNN.
At the beach of Praia Grande alone, on the Sao Paulo coast, more than 170 penguins have washed up on shore since Friday, according to the local government.
It is not unusual for penguins to show up on the Brazilian coast during their migration, but most of the time, they are alive, said another biologist, Isabelle Nunes.
Necropsies performed on many of the penguins show that they had no food in their stomachs and probably starved to death, Nascimento said, adding that cold weather probably contributed to their deaths.
Nunes said it is possible that the cold waters, brought on by a regional cold front, made the fish that the penguins eat seek other waters.
More tests are being conducted, Nunes said.
Farther north, on the famous beaches of Rio de Janeiro, penguin appearances and rescues have become common in recent years.
It's normal for Magellan penguins to leave their colonies in the Antarctic in an annual migration in search of fish, following the plankton-rich, frigid water currents traveling north along the coast of South America. What has changed is that they are increasingly unable to return home because they get sick, weak or disoriented for reasons that have yet to be determined.
Climate change, overfishing and pollution of the water all could contribute to the penguins becoming lost.
The Niteroi Zoo, near Rio de Janeiro, first began receiving penguins for rescue in 1999. Since then, they have received an increasing number of the birds, peaking with 1,000 penguins in 2008.
CNN's Rafael Romo contributed to this report.
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/WORLD/americas/07/21/brazil.dead.penguins/story.penguin.cnn.jpgHundreds of penguins wash up on Brazilian coast
Also, numerous other sea birds,... more
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