14 DAY TRIAL // Ebola provokes a horrific death in humans, but for gorillas it may be a horrific end of the species, the end of one cousin of the human kind. About 5,000 gorillas were killed by the Ebola virus in Lossi Sanctuary (northwestern Republic of Congo), pushing the threatened species even closer to extinction.
The Ebola virus is spreading with steady 31 miles (50 km) across western and central Africa, killing more than 90 % of the gorillas in its path. There was a "massive die-off" of western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) in Congo's Lossi Sanctuary park from 2002 to 2004. "The Lossi outbreak killed about as many gorillas as survive in the entire eastern gorillas species (Gorilla beringei)."
The remaining gorillas in the area live within about 124 miles (200 kilometers) of the current outbreak. The first gorilla carcasses killed by the Ebola virus were found inside the sanctuary in October 2002. But this number is probably only a "small fraction" of gorillas likely to have been killed by Ebola in the past decades. Within a four-month period, 130 of the 143 studied gorillas had died.
Gorilla populations were monitored throughout an area of 1,500 square miles (4,000 square kilometers). Each Ebola outbreak resulted in greater than 90 % mortality. "A quarter of the gorillas in the world have died from Ebola in the last 12 years," said Peter Walsh of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "But there are some indications that fruit bats may be the culprits (of Ebola virus origin)".
"Add commercial hunting to the mix, and we have a recipe for rapid ecological extinction. Ape species that were abundant and widely distributed a decade ago are rapidly being reduced to remnant populations."
Scientists have long known that apes were susceptible to Ebola, but until now, they had no easy way to see the severity of the problem. Ebola or viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF) first broke out in 1976 in Zaire, near Ebola River.
In humans, the disease is traced to the bushmeat consume, gorillas and chimpanzees that are killed, butchered and sold for meat. VHF provokes in the feverish patient bleed under the skin and in severe cases, from the mouth, ears and eyes. Blood loss, shock and organ failure lead to coma and delirium and death in 80 % of the cases within two weeks. And there is no cure known so far. "[Ebola] has already swept through two of the largest gorilla reserves and three or four of the smaller ones," added Walsh. "The outlook is pretty bleak."
Gorillas seem to get the virus not only from animal reservoir, but also by contact between ape groups themselves. "There is a glimmer of hope, however, a newly developed vaccine that has been shown to be effective at protecting laboratory monkeys from the Ebola virus." said Walsh. "If we can develop this vaccine for gorillas, then I think it is feasible to carry out a vaccination program," Walsh said. It would cost around two million U.S. dollars to develop the vaccine and around five million dollars to vaccinate a sufficient number of gorillas.