There has been two newly recognized herpesviruses that has caused fatal disease among

Asian and African elephants. Scientists are aware that this disease can show as lack of energy,

swelling of the head, thoracic limbs, oral ulceration, and discoloration of the tongue. Researchers

chose this topic because these species of elephants are endangered and they are trying to do

anything in their power to breed them naturally. This topic is relevant to us because these

elephants deaths are going to start affecting our zoo populations. A search for pathology

material from potential cases of this herpesvirus disease was carried out by sending a survey to

all participating zoos via the American zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA, Silver Spring,

Maryland, USA) Species Survival Plan (SSP, Portland, Oregon, USA and Indianapolis, Indiana,

USA) and by reviewing the Asian elephant studbook mortality records (Richman, et al., 2000).

These scientists are trying to prove a cure for this disease.

This topic is valuable because these animals are endangered and by not doing anything to

help cure this disease, were letting these endangered animals die off. Knowing this information

does benefit the world to know because as an ecosystem, we need to care. The researchers

hypothesis is to report the clinical and pathological findings of this new herpesvirus disease

among elephants. Therefore, the information was being gathered by sending out surveys to

participating zoos and also serological tests were performed via the National Animal Disease

Laboratories on sera from three adult elephants from the National Zoological Park as well as

banked frozen sera from herd-mates from two other zoos (Richman, et al., 2000). DNA

extraction was the technique used for this experiment. DNA was extracted either from fresh or

frozen peripheral blood from ill elephants and DNA was also extracted from healthy elephants,

and then to both sets of this DNA, they would perform polymerase chain reactions.
 The clinical findings resulting that the disease appeared to be sudden with a course of 1

to 7 days. The initial clinical signs were lethargy, anorexia, mild colic, edema of the head, neck,

and thoracic limbs (Richman, et al., 2000). The data gathered didnt show something out of the

ordinary or go against what scientists believed. It was exciting for them to see these results, but

nothing turned out to be strange. The information gathered support their hypothesis as stated

here, this supports our molecular findings, and demonstrates that the elephant herpesviruses are

unique in immunogenicity such that cross reactivity with other herpesviruses is not detected

(Richman, et al., 2000). Although they came up with great information and conclusions, they

dont feel that they gathered enough information to come up with one based conclusion. They

feel like they need more epidemiological work to clarify the potential carrier statuses.

Studying a bigger population wouldnt help this experiment because this disease is found

only among elephants, in which they are an endangered species. Therefore, including different

breeds of animals wouldnt make a difference to the results of this experiment. However, there

were factors they didnt consider that they should have, like testing a broader range of

medications.
 Bibliography

Richman, et al. (2000). Clinical and Pathological Findings of a Newly Recognized Disease of
Elephants Caused by Endotheliotropic Herpesviruses. Journal of Wildlife Diseases,
36(1), 1-12.