A total of 634 sea lions have been found dead in Peru. Before publishing their findings on the sea lions, the team of Peruvian and Argentine scientists had warned that the arrival of the bird flu virus posed a threat to protected birds in South America, including the Andean condor. A study led by Montserrat Agüero, from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture’s Central Veterinary Laboratory, suggested that the avian virus mutated at the mink farm and was then transmitted from mammal to mammal