HEALTHY: for now Gorilla packs don't mingle much, which should protect them from Ebola infection
There's nothing like an outbreak of Ebola virus to guarantee screaming headlines. That's largely due to the mid-1990s bestseller
The Hot Zone
, which described the disease's horrifying course in gruesome detail, leaving many readers to believe that Ebola posed a looming threat to human existence. The truth is, however, that since the first recorded human cases in the 1970s, only a few hundred people have died from it. Of all the diseases you need to be afraid of, Ebola is near the bottom of the list.
Unless, that is, you're a gorilla. Over the past decade...
