Dolphins' playful social habits form bonds, but spread virus

Mann and other scientists are trying to understand how a highly contagious and lethal disease called cetacean morbillivirus — related to measles in humans and first detected in Virginia and Maryland waters — can spread rapidly among dolphins along the Atlantic Coast, as it did from 2013 to 2015.

During that outbreak, more than 1,600 dolphins washed ashore on beaches from New York to Florida, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Altogether, an estimated 20,000 dolphins died from the virus, and the region’s population of coastal dolphins shrank by about 50%.
To understand how diseases circulate in social animals — such as humans, dolphins or chimpanzees — scientists must scrutinize not only the biology of a virus, but also how vulnerable populations interact, said Jacob Negrey, a researcher who studies animal viruses at Wake Forest School of Medicine.