Human cold virus killing chimps in Uganda

[Still Waters]

In the wild, chimpanzees face any number of dire threats, ranging from poachers to predators to deforestation.

That's why scientists, investigating an outbreak of respiratory disease in a community of wild chimpanzees in Uganda's Kibale National Park, were surprised and dismayed to discover that a human "common cold" virus known as rhinovirus C was killing healthy chimps.

"This was an explosive outbreak of severe coughing and sneezing," says Tony Goldberg, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Veterinary Medicine and one of the senior authors of a report documenting the event.

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-chimpanzee-deaths-uganda-pinned-human.html