Australia confirms first H5 bird flu case in mammal as virus spreads to wildlife

A long-nosed fur seal found at Beachport in South Australia has become the first mammal in Australia confirmed to carry the H5 bird flu virus, marking a quiet but significant crossing of a biological threshold. The seal almost certainly contracted the strain from infected wild birds, continuing a chain of transmission that began when the virus arrived on Australian shores in June. What unfolds from here follows a pattern already witnessed in South America and Antarctica, where mammal-to-mammal spread within seal colonies has produced devastating mortality, particularly among the young. For now