Chimps Eat Dirt, Leaves to Fend Off Malaria

From National Geographic News
by Scott Norris

Chimpanzees in Uganda swallow mouthfuls of dirt to "self medicate" against malaria, according to a new study.

Clay soils consumed by both chimps and humans in Uganda's Kibale National Park contain high concentrations of the mineral kaolinite, a main ingredient in some anti-diarrheal medications.

Experts had previously suggested that chimps ate the fine-grained clay to help ward off intestinal ailments or to obtain added minerals in their diet.

But a French team recently observed that the chimps eat dirt before or after consuming leaves from the Trichilia rubescens plant, which contains potent medicinal chemicals.

Eating the bitter vegetation alone gives the chimps no health benefit, researchers say.

Instead the plant's malaria medicine is activated when fine soil particles bind with chemicals in the leaves.

Chimps often select dirt that has been exposed on the roots of newly fallen trees, added study co-author Sabrina Krief, of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

"This may be to avoid worms, bacteria, and stones," she said.

Krief and colleagues described the research online in the January issue of the journal Naturwissenschaften.

In humans, soil consumption—or geophagy—has often been viewed as a sign of metabolic disorder or even mental illness.

But the practice is relatively common among animals and is now understood to yield important health benefits.

In parrots and macaws, for example, clay particles are thought to help neutralize toxins present in some favored food sources.

Soil-eating may also provide a soothing coating to the animals' digestive tracts.

In Uganda, however, Krief and colleagues suspected that the chimps were eating soil for other reasons than simply to combat indigestion.

Like humans, chimps can suffer the potentially fatal effects of malaria, although the types of Plasmodium parasites that cause the disease in chimps are different from the four known to infect people. (See a close-up image of malaria parasites attacking a human's red blood cells.)

In previous laboratory studies, Krief's team had found that extracts of the Trichilia plant were effective in fighting the parasite that causes malaria in chimps.

"I noticed that the chimps often eat soil just before or after eating Trichilia leaves," Krief said. "I wondered what might be the effect of mixing the two substances."

To investigate, Krief and colleagues constructed a laboratory model that duplicated chimpanzees' chewing and digestion.

The researchers ground up leaves and soaked them in an acid solution similar to the chimps' digestive fluids. The mixture was then tested for its ability to kill the malarial parasite.

Solutions of artificially digested leaves without soil showed no anti-malarial activity.

But when samples of the soil consumed by the chimps were added to the mix, the researchers found a strong disease-fighting effect.

Chimps and other apes may treat themselves for a variety of ailments by consuming plants, earth, and other materials, experts say.

In another part of Africa, chimps are known to swallow certain leaves to help rid themselves of intestinal parasites.

Previous work by Krief and others had shown that of the 163 plant species Kibale chimps are known to eat, at least 35 are used in humans' traditional medicine.

"The shared use of plants by humans and apes shows how the tropical forest is a unique resource for wildlife, local communities, and western medicine," Krief said.

Jim Moore is an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved with the new study.

"It's been known for a long time that chimpanzees selectively eat certain plants in ways and at times that only really make sense if they are self-medicating," Moore said.

"This paper is the first I'm aware of to suggest synergistic action of soil and a putatively medicinal plant, and that's important."

But Moore noted that the anti-malaria effect has only been shown in the researchers' model and not yet in living chimps.

"It isn't clear that chimpanzees are seeking the synergy [between leaves and soil]," Moore said. "The paper isn't persuasive in eliminating other hypotheses for geophagy."

First Observed Birth of a Western Lowland Gorilla in the Wild

Here, Mowane is seen riding her mother Malui's back.
Picture © Kate Bracewell, Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas

from wwf.org (Congo Basin > Updates)
January 22, 2008

Just last month, staff of the WWF-funded Dzanga-Sangha Primate Habituation Programme witnessed the birth of a new infant into the Makumba group of western lowland gorillas, which lives in the Central Africa Republic's Dzanga-Ndoki National Park. The newborn was named Mowane - meaning "gift of God" in the local Bantu language.

Malui gave birth to Mowane in a tree nest as Makumba - her father - fed nearby. Malui was then observed biting Mowane's umbilical cord free, after which she climbed down and made three more nests on the ground. At this point her other offspring came and watched Malui groom their new sister. Like other mother-offspring pairs, Mowane has inherited her mother's unique nose pattern - v-shaped nostrils with distinct line-markings above.

The mother and infant are doing well and staying close to Makumba, who is taking his protective role seriously - a week after the birth he was observed leading his group away from the threat of a solitary male. Mowane is getting stronger by the day and has graduated from being carried on Malui's belly to being on her mother's back, and more recently on her arm.

Makumba's group is one of four in varying stages of habituation, along with a group of agile mangabey monkeys. Established in 1997 and funded by WWF, the Dzanga-Sangha Primate Habituation Programme (PHP) works to gradually acclimate western lowland gorillas to human contact for tourism and research. Through habituation, the program can help increase the economic values of parks in the Dzanga-Sangha region, generate ecotourism income for local communities, and increase support for gorilla conservation. The PHP is part of a larger Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas Ecotourism Programme, managed in partnership with the government of the Central African Republic, WWF and German nongovernmental organizations.

WWF's support of PHP is part of our work in the Congo Basin region, whose dense forests extend almost 500 million acres and span the boundaries of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. WWF has worked for more than 30 years to protect the Congo Basin and continues to be active in the field, engaging conservation partners and protecting great apes for future generations.

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Very Important Scientists of the Month: Thomas Breuer & Mireille Hockemba

Doin' it gorilla-style
from New Scientist.com
Michael Marshall, online editorial assistant

Well, we had to have a Valentine's Day post, so here it is. For the first time, scientists have photographed wild gorillas mating face-to-face (see Photo).

Thomas Breuer & Mireille Ndoundou Hockemba, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, observed the behaviour during a long-term study of western gorillas in the Republic of Congo. They reported their findings in the April 2007 issue of Gorilla Gazette, but the photos have only now been released.

Face-to-face mating is unusual among primates. It's technically called ventro-ventral copulation, and is only frequently observed in bonobos and, of course, humans. Most primates prefer the dorso-ventral position, which our more plainly spoken readers may know as doggie-style.

The gorilla shown in the picture, who researchers call Leah, is something of a celebrity. In 2005 she was the first wild gorilla observed using a tool - she dipped a long stick into a pool of water to test its depth before wading in.

The story got me wondering about the evolutionary reasons for these different mating behaviours. On the face of it, you could argue that one sexual position is pretty much as good as another (unless you're endangering yourself by performing weird contortions, which seems to be a purely human preoccupation). After all, the point is to deliver the sperm to the egg in as efficient a way as possible, and so long as the male is fully inserted, what difference can it make?

However, some species copulate for reasons other than breeding. Famously, bonobos engage in large quantities of sex, partly as a way of forming and maintaining social bonds. They have also been observed having sex face-to-face, not to mention a whole catalogue of other activities including (and before we get complaints, this is the official term) penis fencing.

That suggests to me that face-to-face mating could have evolved to help strengthen emotional and social bonds, and promote teamwork. Focusing on your partners face would presumably emboss it in your memory, helping you to form a relationship with them. It has also been shown that eye contact makes you more attractive. Why this is so is unclear, but might it be a marker of openness and interest?

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the third gorilla (on the right of the picture) is Leah's young daughter Nancy. So probably not a gorilla peeping Tom - though given the range of sexual behaviours observed in primates, I won't be surprised if some of them engage in voyeurism as well.

more reports on Thomas & Mireille's work can be found at the links below:

*nature.news: Gorillas in the missionary position
*sciencedaily.com: Unique Mating Photos Of Wild Gorillas Face To Face
*reuters.com: Gorillas caught in face-to-face love action
*nationalgeographic.com: Gorillas Photographed Mating Face-to-Face -- A First
*NY Times blog: The Ultimate Valentine Card: Full-Frontal Gorilla Love

Great Apes Endangered By Human Viruses

(Photo Credit: Sonja Metzger/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)

from ScienceDaily.com

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2008) — The opening of gorillas and chimpanzees reserves for tourism is often portrayed as the key to conserving these endangered great apes. There are also however serious concerns that tourism may expose wild apes to infection by virulent human diseases.

Commercial hunting and habitat loss are major drivers of the rapid decline of great apes, the researchers said. Ecotourism and research have been widely promoted as a means of providing alternative value for apes and their habitats. While close contact between humans and habituated apes has raised concerns about disease transmission, previous studies had only demonstrated the spread of relatively mild bacterial and parasitic infections from humans to wild apes.

A new study by researchers of the Robert Koch Institute (Berlin), the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) and the Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques (Ivory Coast) confirms the disease threat, finding the first direct evidence of virus transmission from humans to wild apes. The study also showed however that research and tourism projects strongly suppressed the poaching of chimpanzees. This protective effect outweighed the substantial chimpanzee mortality caused by human disease introduction.

Respiratory disease introduction by humans has long been suspected at sites where apes in the wild have been in close contact to humans but this is the first study to diagnose the disease agent and quantify the population impact. "We need to be much more proactive about instituting strict hygiene precautions at all ape tourism and research sites", says Fabian Leendertz, senior author of the paper and a wildlife disease epidemiologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. "One possibility for promoting compliance is a certification process similar to the green labelling system now used in the timber industry."

The study used a multidisciplinary approach involving behavioural ecology, veterinary medicine, virology and population biology to track human disease introduction into two chimpanzee communities at Taï National Park in Côte d’Ivoire, where researchers first began to habituate chimpanzees to human presence in 1982. Tissue samples taken from chimpanzees that had died in a series of outbreaks dating back to 1999 tested positive for two human respiratory viruses that are major sources of human infant mortality in the developing world, namely human respiratory syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus.

Viral strains sampled from the chimpanzees were closely related to pandemic strains concurrently circulating in human populations as far away as China and Argentina, suggesting recent introduction from humans into the chimpanzees. The authors also used clinical observations and demographic analyses to infer that similar respiratory outbreaks could date as far back as 1986.

The research project has however also had strongly positive effects. Longitudinal surveys showed that the presence of researchers had suppressed poaching activities in the surrounding area. Consequently, chimpanzee densities at both the research study site and a nearby chimpanzee tourism site were much higher than would be expected given their accessibility to poachers. "Researcher presence is confirmed to have a major positive impact on the protection of an area," says co-author Christophe Boesch of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, who directs the research project at Taï. "However, it comes with some hygienic problems which need to be addressed."

"The study confirms that multidisciplinary research is needed to investigate different issues involved in ape conservation", said Paul N’Goran, a researcher at the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire. "Our study shows the critical role that scientific research can play in monitoring the impact and effectiveness of conservation strategies."

Journal reference: Sophie Köndgen, Hjalmar Kühl, Paul K. N’Goran, Peter D. Walsh, Svenja Schenk, Nancy Ernst, Roman Biek, Pierre Formenty, Kerstin Mätz-Rensing, Brunhilde Schweiger, Sandra Junglen, Heinz Ellerbrok, Andreas Nitsche, Thomas Briese, W. Ian Lipkin, Georg Pauli, Christophe Boesch, and Fabian H. Leendertz. Pandemic Human Viruses Cause Decline of Endangered Great Apes. Current Biology, January 2008

Adapted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

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Very Important Scientist of the Month: Olaf Thalmann

Meet the Relatives
Robert Langreth 01.07.08
From Forbes magazine

Gorillas are among our closest living relations. For $500 you can make a one-hour house call in their jungle habitat. Hunters, disease and habitat loss are decimating our closest living relatives--chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas and bonobos. In West Africa the Ebola virus killed 5,000 gorillas in just one corner of the Republic of the Congo. Chimpanzees are hunted for their meat, considered a luxury in some parts. In Asia orangutans are being overrun by palm oil plantations and coffee farms.

One unlikely success story amid this gloom are the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By the late 1970s poaching and deforestation had reduced the gorilla population to 250. The late American naturalist Dian Fossey brought their plight to world attention, but it was two researchers working for the Wildlife Conservation Society, Bill Weber and Amy Vedder, who pioneered the idea of using ecotourism as a way to save the animals.

Thanks to ecotourism, 700 of these giant beasts are alive today, wedged into small parks surrounded by subsistence farms in one of the most populated parts of Africa. Park rangers even protected them during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. "There is no doubt the mountain gorillas would have been wiped out, were it not for ecotourism," says Allard Blom, a primatologist at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C. Threats, though, remain ever present. In July four mountain gorillas were shot execution-style.

Last year in Rwanda 14,000 visitors paid $500 each for a one-hour guided tour to see the primates. Virunga Lodge, completed on a hilltop near the gorilla park in 2005, gets several hundred customers a year, who typically pay $4,825 for an eight-day trip with multiple gorilla viewings in Rwanda and Uganda. "Rwanda is very much the flavor of the month," says safari operator Aris Grammaticas. "The gorillas are very sought after." He operates the $650-a-night (per person) Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge, which opened in September adjacent to the gorilla park.

Getting to Rwanda isn't easy. From Europe there are only a few flights a week to the
capital city of Kigali. You'll need lots of cash (there are no ATMs, and only a handful of hotels accept credit cards), a yellow fever vaccination, malaria preventatives and bug spray. Plastic bags are banned to prevent litter, and modern hotel rooms are in limited supply. But Rwandans are to a person courteous and friendly. Expatriates swear it is one of the safest places in Africa.

Sightseeing opportunities in Kigali are few and grisly. A well-done genocide museum pays tribute to the kids who died. At one massacre site near the capital, Nyamata Church, thousands of skulls, some with gaping holes in them, are piled high on basement shelves. Pink-uniformed prison work gangs, many of them former "genocidaires," are a common sight in the countryside.

Gorilla day begins for me with a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call at the Serena Hotel, then a
two-hour drive to the Volcanoes National Park, where gorillas live on the
Rwanda-Congo-Uganda border. There are seven gorilla families in Rwanda that tourists can visit. Each can be visited for only one hour a day and by a group of no more than eight people. Four other gorilla families can be seen in Uganda.

I'm angling to see the 38-member Susa family. But after the guides confer in Kinyarwanda, I end up assigned to the 9-member Sabyinyo clan. I'm cured of any disappointment, though, when our guide, Francis Bayingana, explains in broken English that this group boasts not just the biggest silverback, Guhonda, but also an infant only days old.

Gorillas are our closest relatives, after chimpanzees and bonobos, having diverged from our common ancestors 8 million years ago. Only 1.6% of their DNA differs from ours. The gentle vegetarians eat up to 45 pounds a day of things like bamboo shoots, wild celery and berries. They live in stable harems led by a male silverback, with several females and several children. Females have three to six kids over a lifetime and copulate every three hours when in heat. In the wild they live to about age 40.

They are thought to have once ranged across equatorial Africa. But about 1 million years ago the mountain gorillas were cut off from their cousins in West Africa, perhaps by drought, says Olaf Thalmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

To get to the gorillas, my fellow tourists and I walk through farms to a low stone wall that marks the entrance to the park. There's no buffer zone between human and gorilla. Armed guards follow to protect both us and the gorillas. (In 1999 rebels murdered eight tourists in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.)

We climb over the fence and enter a thick bamboo forest, heading steeply uphill. Francis tells us to tuck our socks over our jeans (lest driver ants swarm up our legs) and to avoid touching the stinging nettles that are everywhere. One of the guides uses a machete to clear the way. The thick mud nearly sucks off my shoes. After half a mile we reach a clearing, where Francis points out elephant tracks. I try to tie my shoe on what looks like a big rock. It turns out to be a pile of dung.

We continue uphill for 500 yards. Suddenly there is a rustling of bamboo, and one gorilla appears; then another and another. The adults pay us no heed and are mostly interested in finding the next piece of roughage. But a curious youngster comes right up to us; he gets so close that the guards hurriedly tell us to back away. Then the gorillas disappear again into the woods, leading us on a slow-speed chase through the dense foliage for half an hour. Finally the family settles down for a midmorning rest on a vine-covered hill.

The 500-pound silverback, Guhonda, sits 15 feet away. He chews on a bamboo shoot and eyes us with world-weary boredom, as if we were tiresome in-laws. The youngsters somersault down the hill, some bouncing so close to us that we have to jump out of their way. Then, for the briefest moment, a mother gorilla opens her arms, revealing her tiny baby.

To read the original paper by Thalmann et al. cited in this paper go here or here
Thalmann O, Fischer A, Lankester F, Pääbo S, Vigilant L (2007) The complex evolutionary history of gorillas: insights from genomic data. Molecular Biology and Evolution 24: 146-158.