Apes Also Get Our Diseases

A silverback gorilla

Many people opt for having monkeys as pets, and owners are sometimes worried about their animals transmitting many diseases to their families, such as tuberculosis and herpes-B negative.  But do we humans worry about the diseases we can transmit to monkeys?

This is the case of gorillas. Gorillas cannot be adopted as pets, but ecotourism–tourism involving travel to areas of natural or ecological interest–may be the reason why these animals get some human diseases. Scientists wrote in a journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that in two parks Africa, where humans have direct contact with many of the remaining mountain gorillas, that there has been an important increase in respiratory-disease outbreaks among the apes. The death of two gorillas in this park led to a deep study that showed that a human virus was directly associated with their deaths.

Human diseases can be easily
transmited to gorillas through
sneezing

Ecotourism seems to have some pros and cons. Scientists said that for gorillas’ conservation human proximity is essential, but at the same time it is important to minimize the transmission of respiratory pathogens from humans to great apes.

Ecotourism can be a lot of fun, but most humans are not aware of the risks that this activity may have for themselves and for the animals they visit. Anyway, ecotourism is not the only activity that may be dangerous for animals: when humans visit zoos, farms, etc., people can transmit human diseases to them too.

In only a few words, a simple human sneeze can kill a gorilla. Were you aware of this? How do you think that ecotourism can fight against this situation?