Volume: 56 Issue: 1
Year: 2025, Page: 174-183, Doi: https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2025.56.1.174-183
Received: March 6, 2025 Accepted: March 20, 2025 Published: March 31, 2025
The paper presents the findings of a systematic study on occurrence of lung flukes in wild felids observed over a period of one year during postmortem examination across different forest ranges in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu, India. A total of 22 wild felids comprising of 7 tigers and 15 leopards were screened during the Fourteen months period from December 2023 to January 2025. Detailed postmortem examination was conducted by the forest veterinary officer following standard procedures. The flukes were collected, labelled, processed as per standard procedures, identified and photographed. Out of these, 3 tigers (42.85%) and 3 leopards (20%) were found infected with lung flukes with an overall occurrence of 27.27%. Among the three infected tigers, two were males aged 3 and 1.5 years and other was a female aged 10 years. Among the three infected leopards, two were males aged 6 and 7 years and other was a female aged 12 years. Infected tigers were from Gudalur and Bitherkadu forest ranges whereas infected leopards were from Gudalur and Pandalur forest ranges. All lung flukes were found in lung tissue inside lung cysts. It was observed that 50% of cysts had single fluke and 50% of cysts had a pair of flukes. A total of 84 flukes were recovered from 56 cysts from the three infected tigers and a total of 33 flukes from 22 cysts were recovered from the three infected leopards. Overall total of lung flukes collected from all the six wild felines was 117 from 78 lung cysts. The findings revealed that lung fluke infection by Paragonimus sp. is common in wild felines in different forest ranges of The Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, India in both male and female animals of all age groups. Pathological findings in the infected animals revealed several cysts or nodules in the lung tissue and each cyst containing the flukes surrounded by purulent fluid. The present observations on the occurrence of lung fluke infection with Paragonimus sp. and recovery of these flukes in large numbers will be important to map the status of fluke infection in felines in the wild and to frame strategies for control of lung flukes in these animals.
Keywords: Occurrence, lung flukes, Paragonimus sp., wild felines, The Nilgiris
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© 2025 Sundar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Sundar, S.T.B., Kumar. K.R., Aravind, M., Jeeva, K. and Jagatheesan, P.N.R. 2025. Occurrence of lung flukes in wild felids across different forest ranges in The Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, India.
J. Vet. Anim. Sci. 56 (1):174-183