Partnership with Universidad CEU de Valencia

The objective of this project is to carry out a study about the registered cases of salmonellosis among penguins, in collaboration with the Veterinary School at Cardenal Herrera CEU Valencia. The collaboration will include collecting samples with cotton swabs from the animals’ cloacas, and sending fish samples as nutrition control.

The salmonella bacteria are hosted, mainly, in the gastrointestinal tract on a wide variety of animals, both domestic and wild. The main way of contagion is by feeding on animal products, mainly eggs and chicken meat. However, there is an important difference with the transmission of the bacteria through other means, such as direct or indirect contact with the environment, other people or other animals, domestic or wild.

The group has carried our many preliminary studies on wild and domestic animals such as Galapagos tortoises, dromedaries, vultures, eagles, etc. In all the cases studied, the biggest difficulty was having Access to a size sample that could be representative of the study presented.

Having now access to a large penguin population the researchers will be able to find out more about the presence of Salmonella sp. and Campylobacter in these animals.