The bird flu epidemic that has killed 31 people in southeast Asia this year may also have killed 23 tigers at a zoo in eastern Thailand.
"I've received a report this morning that 23 tigers have died and some others have been sick," Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang said today.
"Their preliminary symptoms showed they might have caught bird flu," said Mr Chaturon, who is in charge of the Thai battle against bird flu.
The tigers died after they had been fed raw chicken at the Sri Racha Tigers Zoo, 50 miles east of Bangkok, the chief of the Agriculture Ministry's Livestock Development Department, said.
The zoo has been closed because tigers started dying on October 14th and about 30 of the 400 tigers in the zoo were ill, he said.
A clouded leopard died with similar symptoms at a Thai zoo earlier this year, and scientific studies have shown since that cats can be infected with avian flu, which means pets could spread the disease.
The underlying fear of the bird flu epidemic, which swept through much of Asia early this year, is that the H5N1 avian flu virus could get into an animal that can also host a human flu virus, most likely a pig.
That could produce a mutation that could spread through a human population with no immunity to it and lead to a pandemic like the 1918-19 Spanish flu that killed an estimated 20 million people around the world.