Giant pandas under threat from parasitic worm

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13016-giant-pandas-under-threat-from-parasitic-worm.html

The already close to extinction species of Giant Pandas are being whiped out by a parasitic worm called Baylisascaris schroederi. The parasites cause visceral larval migrans, causes haemorrhaging of the liver, intestine, and lungs.


Peter Daszak, executive director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York, US, is researching an answer by going through the records of wild panda post-mortems between 1971 and 2006.

They found that from 1990 onwards, the proportion of deaths that were linked to a parasitic disease rose from less than 10% to 50%