Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

Sarah writes “Hi Wes I really love the show and was just going through episode 283 with Tom ( a guest I love when you have him on) and I know I’d seen documentaries in the past speaking about human viruses killing great apes and distinctly remember one where they had to wear face masks near a wild tribe of gorillas. I also found this article.

Since in this show you mentioned a few times viruses not being able to be passed on and Tom trying to find links between small pox killing Sasquatch. Hope you find this article interesting, Again love the show keen for the next episode”

Here is a clip from the article: Human Viruses Kill Great Apes
Common human viruses are killing endangered great apes. A new study reveals a dark side to research and ecotourism, both of which ironically are aimed to help the apes and which may still do more good than harm.

Scientists investigated chimpanzees hit by five outbreaks of respiratory disease between 1999 and 2006 in Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa. Nearly all the endangered chimps became sick and many died.

All available tissue samples gathered from chimp victims tested positive for one of two germs — human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV) or human metapneumovirus (HMPV). These viruses often cause respiratory disease in humans and, in developing countries, are a major source of infant mortality.

“The viruses we found are very common,” said researcher Fabian Leendertz, a wildlife epidemiologist at the Robert Koch-Institute and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. “Antibody prevalence in humans is almost up to 100 percent, meaning almost everybody has had contact with these viruses” and developed antibodies, naturally, designed to fight the germs.

These cases represent the first confirmed evidence of viruses transmitted directly from humans to wild great apes.

“Virtually all diseases that can harm us can harm the great apes since we share so many genetic and physiologic properties,” Leendertz told LiveScience.

There is a long history of diseases spreading from great apes to humans, and perhaps from humans to great apes:

-Ebola is a widespread threat to gorillas and chimps in Central Africa, and may have spread to humans from people who ate infected animals. Ebola and SARS may both have originally come from bats.

-HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, originated from chimps and other primates.

-Gorillas may have given humans pubic lice, or “the crabs.”

-There have been suspicions that chimps at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania contracted polio from humans, Leendertz said.

-There have also been concerns that gorillas contracted yaws, a disease related to syphilis that is not sexually transmitted, from humans, Leendertz added.

-Gorillas and chimpanzees in West Africa have been killed by outbreaks of anthrax. This may have originated from cattle herded by humans, although Leendertz noted these may have been natural events that just exist there in the forests.

Although research and ecotourism efforts have brought people into greater contact with endangered great apes in the wild, potentially threatening the primates, “research and tourism has a strong positive effect on great apes’ survival since it reduces poaching activities in these areas and gives more ‘political weight’ to the apes and protected areas,” Leendertz added.

Indeed, studies suggest the protective effect researchers have against poachers outweighed the substantial chimpanzee death rate caused by human diseases, said Christophe Boesch of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “However, it comes with some hygienic problems which need to be addressed,” he added.

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