A sea otter has become the first to be diagnosed with asthma after developing breathing difficulties when smoke from wildfires in Washington affected her aquarium. Aquarium biologist Sara Perry is training Mishka to properly inhale the medication when the apparatus is put on her nose, using food as an incentive.

Vets built a specially-made inhaler for Mishka and are in the process of teaching her how to use it.

Their numbers have now swelled to the hundreds of thousands but they continue to be classed as threatened because of a plateau in population growth. The inhaler contains the same medication that humans are prescribed to manage asthma symptoms. A veterinarian on staff at the Aquarium diagnosed Mishka with asthma based on clinical signs and medical tests.

“These lungs here, you can see, have more white in them”.

But she can also serve as a barometer of sorts for our own environmental health. Seattle NBC affiliate KING 5 reports that Mishka appears to have developed asthma.

A sea otter in Seattle is getting a little help from modern science after being diagnosed with a human illness.

“More and more there starts to be this concept of what we’re calling ‘One Health, ‘ which really is that there’s a connection between health of people and the health other species”, he told told KING-5.

“Because of that, it’s estimated that the sea otters on our state’s coast today are descended from as few as 10 animals”, the aquarium explained. Dr. Lahner believes Mishka was susceptible to the disease due to low genetic diversity after sea otters went extinct in their native Pacific Northwest and were replaced by Alaskan sea otters in the late 1960s.