EPIDEMIC IN AFRICA

Ebola Virus Kills Thousands of Gorillas

Outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus has killed up to 5,500 gorillas in West Africa. A study released on Friday says that together with commercial hunting, the virus could threaten the species with extinction.

AP

A western gorilla in Congo: The Ebola virus is threatening the species.

An outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa hasn't just killed people. It has also caused the deaths of up to 5,500 gorillas in the region, according to a study published on Friday. Over 90 percent of the regional gorilla population perished between 2001 and 2005, and the outbreak -- combined with commercial hunting -- threatens to send the species into extinction, the researchers said.

The report, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, says "ape species that were abundant and widely distributed a decade ago are rapidly being reduced to a tiny remnant population." The survey is the first comprehensive assessment of the deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo and Gabon in 2002 and 2003 that killed anywhere from 3,500 to 5,500 gorillas and an uncounted number of chimpanzees. Ebola has killed 1,287 people in Africa since 1976 according to the World Health Organization Web site.

"The Zaire strain of Ebola virus killed about 5,000 gorillas in our study area alone," said research team leader Magdalena Bermejo of the University of Barcelona in Spain, according to the report. "Add commercial hunting to the mix, and we have a recipe for rapid ecological extinction."

Bermejo's team began studying a group of western gorillas in 1995 in the Lossi Sanctuary in north-western Democratic Republic of Congo. "By 2002 we had identified 10 social groups with 143 individuals," the researchers wrote. But that year, an outbreak of Ebola killed dozens of people in the region, as well as 130 of the gorillas. The researchers turned their attention to another group of 95 gorillas, but a 2003 outbreak killed all but 4 of those animals.

That prompted the team to analyze the regional pattern of gorilla deaths. Friday's report concludes that the virus spread primarily from gorilla to gorilla in a southward direction. They arrived at the 5,500 figure based on the number of observed deaths and the known mortality rate of the Ebola virus, which kills between 50 and 90 percent of its victims.

Ebola hemorrhagic fever causes severe fever, headaches, joint and muscle aches, sore throat and weakness, followed by diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain and internal and external bleeding. The virus is transmitted by direct contact with bodily fluids such as blood, urine or saliva. There is no cure or effective treatment, and vaccines are still in development.

The virus seems to be spreading faster among gorillas than among humans, Friday's report finds. Peter Walsh, an ecologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has an explanation. He says gorilla groups share territories, often eating fruit from the same tree. Feces from a sick gorilla could easily infect others. Moreover, gorillas and chimpanzees are known to handle the bodies of sick or deceased apes when they find them, which will often transmit the virus.

Bermejo's research supports a different study released in July which concluded that the virus was spreading among gorilla groups, rather than from humans to apes. "Our work is complementary to that -- we have shown it is spreading between groups," Walsh said.

"The issue here is that there is a certain amount of work that needs to be done to take these vaccines that already exist and put them into gorillas," Walsh said. "The price tag on that is a couple of million bucks." He is hoping for contributions from wealthy donors.

amb/Reuters/AP