Chytridiomycosis is the most devastating infectious disease ever recorded in vertebrates, having driven over 90 amphibian species to extinction. Individual suffering at scale demands attention.
Chytridiomycosis causes suffering in affected individual amphibians before death. The disease disrupts the electrolyte transport that amphibians depend on through permeable skin - as electrolyte balance fails, lethargy, loss of righting reflex, and cardiac arrest follow. The experience of metabolic disruption and physiological failure over days to weeks represents genuine suffering at the individual level. At the population level, the collapse of hundreds of amphibian species and the extinction of over 90 represents an unprecedented wildlife welfare crisis. Amphibians receive far less welfare consideration than mammals and birds despite their vertebrate status and the catastrophic scale of their population declines. The welfare and conservation emergency they face is one of the most significant - and underappreciated - of our time.