As any parent or teacher knows, kids that play together get sick together. The same is true for chimpanzees, a new study shows. But the animals’ ills can have much more serious consequences than a head full of lice, and researchers are urging precautionary measures to protect chimps from humanborne diseases.
The new analysis examined long-term demographic and behavioral data from two chimpanzee communities in TaïNational Park in the Ivory Coast. Repeated outbreaks of two human respiratory viruses in recent years had killed many of the chimps, and the researchers began scrutinizing the patterns of deaths to see if environmental conditions such as cycles of drought or rain might have helped transmit the pathogens.