Australian Koalas Under Threat From STDs

Even The Wild Animals Are Not Safe From STDs Too

If you thought that sexually transmitted diseases are restricted to human being, then you are wrong. Australian Koalas also suffer from the illnesses.

The Koala Koalas Under Threat of Killer Disease

Researchers have found out that the beautiful Australian Koalas are in the verge of extinction, because they are dying by the day from  common STDS. The bacterial disease in question here is Chlamydia and its very infectious among the animals. It renders female Koalas infertile, with other effects like eye and bladder failure.

The STD Testing was done Moggill Koala Hospital by some University of Queensland scientists. They were analyzing the data from the deaths of these cute animals.

Differs From The Human

The Chlamydia in question here isn’t the one humans take STD Tesing for, but its spread in through sexual intercourse. A report from Express of the Uk shows that young Koalas aren’t lucky too. They may not have attained the reproduction age and so cannot mate, but they can contract the disease through suckling.

There has been an increase in the deaths of these animals, where researchers indicate that the duration between 1997 to 2013 shows, Koalas Under Threat and the animals have drastically reduced from deaths related to the STD. Over that period that Koala population has decreased by 80%, and Dr. Rachel Allavena is worried that they won’t have the famous iconic species of Koala in their area if the trend continues.

Even when the STD Testing in most of the animals shows that the disease led to the deaths of most of the Koalas, the same span of time has over 5,000 deaths of healthy Koalas that were hit or ran over by cars. More than 20,000 deaths of Koalas that were studied showed that 50% of them were attributed to at least a single disease. They however, did not specify the number of Koala deaths that came about due to chlamydia. Every STD Test however indicated that the major reason for the admission of the Koalas to Moggill was due to chlamydia.

Other Causes For Deaths

Apart from the Koalas that were hit by vehicles, which Dr. Joerg Henning indicated that a quarter of them were in good health, the rest died due to various reasons. Poor teeth that made them to starve, attacks from other animals such as dogs and other wasting diseases.

Data Gathering On Koalas

Researchers wanted to learn more about the plight of Koalas and so they developed Koala Base to capture the data of Koalas that have undergone Private STD Testing in facilities at Southeast Queensland. It’s a database that will accept multiple inputs from various centers. Even Same Day STD Testing will be reflected to enable government department’s veterinarians and researchers to save the Koala species.

The researchers at the University of Queensland hope that their work will be useful to the government departments. The data is accurate and hence actions taken by treating the animals and implementation of preventive measures will help in saving the Southeast Queensland Koalas a great deal.