"We found that this virus was unlike anything else detected in the world," Aeron Hurt of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza said from Melbourne on Tuesday.

 

The flu virus, H11N2, was found in a small number of members of a group of Adélie penguins tested at two locations on the Antarctic Peninsula, the continent's northernmost region. It does not, however, appear to cause illness in the birds.

 

"Probably, in the region we were sampling, the Antarctic peninsula, it's most likely that migratory birds are travel ling down from North and South America," Hurt said.

 

The strain is described in a study published this week in mBio, the online open-access journal of American Society for Microbiology.

 

Researchers collected swabs from 301 Adélie penguins and blood from 270. Using a laboratory technique called real-time reverse transcription-PCR to examine the virus's genetic blueprint, they found avian influenza virus (AIV) genetic material in eight samples - six adult penguins and two chicks.

 

"I think this particular strain is not a great deal of concern to wildlife health, but what it does show is that this is now definitive evidence that AIVs do get down to Antarctica," Hurt said.

 

Using ferrets, the most common animal for influenza testing, the experiments found the virus did not infect the animal.

 

"We did some experiments to assess whether the virus has potential for humans to become infected...it's probably unlikely that humans are likely to be infected by this particular virus," he said.