Isolation of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis from city-living crows captured in a zoo.

To study the distribution of pathogenic Yersinia in city-living birds, 145 wild jungle crows were captured in a zoo between June, 1992 and April, 1993. Although pathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica was not isolated, Y. pseudotuberculosis belonging to serovar 4b was independently isolated from 7 caecal contents, respectively. All 7 isolates were positive on temperature-dependent autoagglutination and had a 70 Kb large plasmid. The plasmid DNAs from the 7 strains had the same BamHI digestion pattern. These results suggest that the wild crows in a zoo are one of the possible reservoirs of Yersinia.