WASHINGTON — Recent outbreaks of ebola among people in Africa also killed thousands of gorillas, animals already threatened by hunting, a new study reports.
Outbreaks in the Congo Republic and Gabon in 2002 and 2003 killed as many as 5,500 gorillas and an uncounted number of chimpanzees, a research team led by Magdalena Bermejo of the University of Barcelona in Spain reports in today's issue of Science.
While conservationists had raised concern about gorilla mortality previously, Bermejo's study provides an estimate of how many died in the epidemic.
"Add commercial hunting to the mix, and we have a recipe for rapid ecological extinction," the researchers wrote. "Ape species that were abundant and widely distributed a decade ago are rapidly being reduced to a tiny remnant population."
Ebola is marked by fever, headache, joint and muscle aches, sore throat and weakness, followed by diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain — and often internal and external bleeding.
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The researchers began studying gorillas in the region in 1995, and by 2001 were focusing on 143 animals that had become accustomed to having people around.
