Does anybody care to try to discredit Darwin's "Theory" again??

Lincoln Park Zoo's Kipper

A mysterious infection that led to the death of Kipper, a 9-year-old male chimpanzee at Lincoln Park Zoo ast week has been identified as a respiratory virus that causes at least 15 percent of the common colds suffered by humans worldwide every year.

Kipper, the chimp who died March 24 in the zoo hospital, was the youngest member of a seven-member family headed by the male chimp Hank. Since his death, the zoo veterinary staff has been trying to identify the illness that befell all seven members of the chimp group he lived with.

"It is a human virus," Steve Thompson, the zoo's vice president of conservation programs, said at a news conference held Friday in the Regenstein Center for African Apes that houses Lincoln Park's chimpanzee and gorilla collection.

The virus was identified, Thompson said, as hMPV [human metapneumovirus], known to cause pneumonia, bronchiolitis and flulike illness. Human children are most vulnerable to it, he said, with wide-ranging studies in human populations showing that about 98 percent of all human children have been exposed to hMPV by age 10.

While all seven members of the chimp group headed by Hank, an 18-year-old male, fell ill, only Kipper, an adolescent, died. On Friday, the rest of the group, still recovering, returned from a two-week stay in the quarantine area in the ape house basement to go back on public display.

How the chimps, which suffer the same respiratory ailments as humans, contracted the virus is a question that probably will never be answered, said Thompson.

"It could have been passed on from one of our staff, but that is highly unlikely," he said, noting that zoo staff wear face masks, gowns, gloves and sterilized footwear when they are in direct contact with the animals.

Viruses pass among humans generally from coughing and sneezing, he said, but viruses stay alive on their own outside their human hosts for some time, so the chimps could have been exposed to the virus in an almost infinite number of ways.

The hMPV virus also shows up in wild chimpanzee populations, Thompson said, citing two instances in the wild, one in East Africa and one in West Africa, where chimps also died after contracting it.

On March 19, keepers at the ape house noticed Hank's group was coming down with runny noses, mild coughs and other flulike symptoms. When the symptoms persisted the next morning, a Friday, keepers moved the chimps to an isolated holding area in the ape house basement to minimize chances of the other chimp group and two gorilla families sharing the building from contracting the bug.

The following Monday, Kipper was visibly showing signs of breathing difficulties and veterinarians moved him to the zoo hospital. The next morning he took a sudden turn for the worse and died.

The six surviving chimps in Hank's group are expected to make a full recovery, saying they are being treated much as any mother would treat a child with the same ailment.

"It is similar to what your doctor would say to you," said Thompson, "drink lots of fluids, get a lot of rest and take some aspirin to relieve the aches and pains."

Courtesy of Mary Ann Howell