Word Of The Week: "Panzootic" - As In Bird Flu's Capacity As A Species Jumper

Bird flu poses a threat that is “unique and new in our lifetime” because it has become a “‘panzootic” that can kill huge numbers across multiple species, experts warn. For months, highly pathogenic bird flu, or H5N1, has been circulating in dairy farms, with dozens of human infections reported among farm workers. It has now jumped into more than 48 species of mammals, from bears to dairy cows, causing mass die-offs in sea lions and elephant seal pups. Last week, the first person in the US died of the infection.

This ability to infect, spread between, and kill such a wide range of creatures has prompted some scientists to call H5N1 a “panzootic”: an epidemic that leaps species barriers and can devastate diverse animal populations, posing a threat to humans too. As shrinking habitats, biodiversity loss and intensified farming create perfect incubators for infectious diseases to jump from one species to another, some scientists say panzootics could become one of the era’s defining threats to human health and security.

Panzootic means “all” and “animals”. “Panzootic is almost a new thing, and we don’t know what sort of threat it is,” says Prof Janet Daly from the University of Nottingham. “We have some viruses that can infect multiple species, and we have some viruses that can cause massive outbreaks, but we haven’t tended to have the combination – that’s something of a new phenomenon … That’s where H5N1 is going, and it just makes it so unpredictable. [It’s] unique and new in our lifetime and memory.” Ed Hutchinson from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research says: “It is really hard for infectious diseases to effectively stop being specialists and move over into a new species. So when that happens, it is striking and concerning.”

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Mark Honigsbaum, a medical historian and author of Pandemic Century, says: “Why are they becoming more frequent? Well, the simple answer is, it’s because of the way we humans settle and colonise larger and larger areas of the planet.” Biodiversity loss is the leading driver of infectious disease outbreaks, as habitat decline and industrialised farming place people in close proximity with other species. Humans have already transformed or occupied more than 70% of the world’s land. Since the 20th century, the most significant driver of this transformation of the way we use land has been the “livestock revolution”. The number of food animals and the amount they produce has increased rapidly to feed growing populations. Deforestation and climate breakdown also force humans and animals into close contact, as wildlife is pushed into smaller spaces. In addition, as the climate warms, mosquitoes, midges and ticks are expanding their geographical ranges.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/15/age-of-the-panzootic-scientists-warn-of-more-devastating-diseases-jumping-between-species-aoe