![]() ![]() In addition to spontaneous and internal bleeding, for the impacted wildlife Murray sees in the clinic, secondary injuries such as lacerations or cuts can become life-threatening because the blood can’t clot.įor the present study, Murray sampled 43 red-tailed hawks, which were admitted to the clinic but did not survive due to their injury or illness. Even after the animal dies, its carcass contains SGAR residues that can be lethal for scavengers. During that time, they may be eaten by birds of prey, such as hawks and owls. However, it takes a few days for the animal to die, and in the meantime, they may continue to feed on the poison. A single feeding of an SGAR potentially contains enough poison to kill a rodent. SGARs are more potent than their first-generation predecessors, to which some rats-particularly in Europe-developed an immunity.ĪRs work by thinning the blood and cause the animal to slowly bleed to death. The study, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, also found that 91 percent of the birds tested positive for two or more different types of anticoagulant rodenticide (AR), with the second-generation ARs (SGARs) brodifacoum, bromadiolone, and difethialone found most frequently. But still, 100 feels like a much more dramatic number.” “In my 2017 paper, 97 percent of the hawks tested were positive, which is very high. “One hundred percent of the red-tailed hawks in the present study tested positive for exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides,” said Murray. But even Murray was taken aback by the results of her most recent study. Murray has witnessed a steady increase in the number of birds of prey that come into Tufts Wildlife Clinic with rodenticides in their systems-some with fatal levels. Mice and rats, or possibly other animals, eat the poison, and then the birds eat the poisoned prey. Exposure to rodenticides occurs when people use these chemicals to kill unwanted pests. Maureen Murray, V03, director of Tufts Wildlife Clinic and clinical associate professor at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, has been studying rodenticide exposure in birds of prey for over a decade.
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