By Susan Milius
Mysterious bird deaths around the Baltic Sea and possibly elsewhere in the world may be caused by a shortage of the vitamin thiamine, researchers say.
Wild birds of varied species along the Baltic coasts have been dying of hard-to-explain paralysis since at least 1982, says Lennart Balk of Stockholm University in Sweden. He and his colleagues have now studied the illness in three species with different life styles — herring gulls, common starlings and common eiders. Paralytic deaths in all three result from shortages of thiamine (vitamin B1), he and his colleagues report online July 13 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As for what’s causing the vitamin deficiencies, though, “the correct answer is, we don’t know,” Balk says.