A parasitic disease in birds caused by a worm that obstructs the windpipe, causing difficulty breathing; the tendency to stare with mouth open.
From 'gape' in reference to the characteristic symptom of birds with open mouths struggling to breathe. The disease was named for its most obvious visual symptom.
Gapes was a devastating disease for poultry farmers before modern veterinary medicine—entire flocks would die from a tiny parasitic worm, and farmers had no understanding of how it spread until scientists developed microscopes.
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