Social contact helped the Ebola virus virtually wipe out a population of gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, French researchers reported on Monday.
A 2004 outbreak of the virus, which also kills people, killed 97 percent of gorillas who lived in groups and 77 percent of solitary males, Damien Caillaud and colleagues from the University of Montpellier and the University of Rennes in France reported.
Overall, it wiped out 95 percent of the gorilla population within a year, they reported in the journal Current Biology.
"Thousands of gorillas have probably disappeared," they wrote.
The study shows that the deadly virus spreads directly from gorilla to gorilla and does not necessarily depend on a still-unidentified third species of animal, perhaps a bat, that can transmit the virus without getting ill from it.
Yeah...suck on that apes...that will teach you to have friends.
I don't think I can begin to describe how sad this makes me.