The deadly Ebola epidemic in West Africa has reportedly killed around 8,641 people, according to data from the World Health Organization.
The Ebola virus has also had an effect on animals as it has reportedly been noted as the greatest threat to the survival of great apes, conservationists have warned, according to the U.K.’s The Independent.
“At this moment in time Ebola is the single greatest threat to the survival of gorillas and chimpanzees,” Meera Inglis, a Conservation Policy PHD student at the University of Sheffield, wrote for The Conservation.
Ria Ghai, an ecologist, reportedly wrote in an article for the Jane Goodall Institute that a third of the world’s chimpanzees and gorillas have died from the Ebola virus since the 1990s.
“Unlike human epidemics, wild ape epidemics tend to go unnoticed for months or even years,” wrote Ghai, according to the National Post.
She added, “Outbreaks of Ebola are infrequent, but many wildlife populations are unmonitored. Therefore, infection of a single member of a highly affiliative animals species like chimpanzees can lead to population-level spread, especially if carcasses are left uncollected to be handled or scavenged by other animals.”
According to WWF, a 1994 Ebola outbreak in Mikebe, in Northern Gabon, reportedly “wiped out the entire population of what used to be the second largest protected population of gorillas and chimpanzees in the world.”
A study published in the journal Science in 2006 reportedly suggested that 5,000 gorillas were killed in Gabon and Congo by the Zaire strain of Ebola in 2002 and 2003.
Inglis has reportedly suggested that a long-term strategy would be to restore forest habitat “as larger forested areas would reduce the chances of infected animals coming into contact with one another.”
