This entry has little to do with pets, unless a huge elephant seal is your idea of a pet, but what it is, is how we can stumble upon ways to help creatures in need. The folks at the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County have been trying something old to speed the healing of wounds suffered by seals and sea lions, who come into the center.
This is from Dr. Bill Van Bonn, a veterinarian on staff at the center:
“Gupta” a weaner male Elephant seal that presented on 4 OCT 2010 with a massive shark bite wound to the left thorax and axilla. The shark must have come from below-left and must have had a decent hold of “Gupta” for a second or so. The wounds consist of major soft tissue loss over much of the left side of the chest, multiple lacerations and multiple puncture wounds in the left ‘armpit’. At our initial evaluation we sedated the animal, took some radiographs and thoroughly evaluated the wounds. The good news- no vital structures were damaged. The chest wall is intact and there is no evidence of joint involvement. The bad news is the massive soft tissue trauma left a lot of skin and muscle without a blood supply and it was in various stages of dying when we first looked at the animal. The wound was infected
and infested with fly larvae (maggots) pretty gross in all respects. So we were faced with making a plan for open wound
treatment- aggressive topical cleansing, removal of dead tissue and application of some sort of antimicrobial, antiseptic ointment. That’s when we thought of honey.
Honey is being used for its healing properties at the Marine Mammal Center.
Honey has gained recent popularity in both human and veterinary medicine as a wound treatment due largely to its natural healing properties. It has very high sugar content and as a result binds water molecules strongly. That makes the water unavailable to organisms trying to make a living in the area. This is why honey can be safely stored on the shelf without refrigeration and does not spoil like milk. Honey also contains a variety of compounds that may enhance the Gupta, an elephant seal, is swathed with honey to help the healing after a shark attack.
tissue response to infection and inflammation. It’s relatively inexpensive [in fact much less expensive than most topical antibiotic ointments and evidence suggests it is just as effective. So we decided to try. Every other day or so we've been cleaning up the wound and applying a generous layer of honey to it.
Now – I am not sure if it is the honey or tincture of time, could be either or both, but “Gupta’s” wounds are healing quite nicely indeed! The animal is off all antibiotics and if things continue at this pace he’ll be able to
go home in no time!
Gupta was released back into the wild in late October.
Links:
Some information on the healing property of honey.
