You Really Must Know....

In January of 2006 an orangutan named Meimei, owned by a person in Tainan, fell seriously ill. The Pingtung Rescue Center for Endangered Wild Animals' emergency team, led by veterinarian Chen Chen-chih, immediately took the animal's treatment in hand. The preliminary diagnosis was acute kidney failure, but after Meimei was stabilized and brought back to the center, further tests showed she was infected with a highly dangerous hantavirus (spread by rats, usually infecting only humans). This was the first known case in the world of an orangutan infected with a hantavirus.

Kurtis Pei says that this information is very important for orangutan conservation. Right now their habitats in Indonesia and Malaysia are being destroyed by intensive logging. "Unfortunately, rats follow in the wake of human activity, so this increases the danger to orangutans." The case also showed that if humans and animals interact too closely, some diseases may jump from one group to the other.

Well-known illnesses shared in common by man and beast include rabies and avian flu. Primates are most susceptible to tuberculosis. The rescue center once took an orangutan with TB from a theme park. During the decade-plus the animal lived in the theme park, it put on shows eating potato chips, drinking beer, and sharing cigarettes with visitors, so that all of the thousands of people who came in contact with him were at risk!

Three years ago, the center, working with Hiroshi Sato of Nagasaki University, did the first systematic health survey of the Formosan macaque population. It turned out that 90% are carriers of the herpes B virus. Although there have been less than 40 known cases of this among humans in history (data from 1933 to 2003), and most of these were among professional animal keepers, unless treated properly the disease can be fatal in up to 80% of cases.

One result of the health survey is that cities and counties in Taiwan with large macaque populations, where human-monkey interaction is frequent, have adjusted their conservation programs to discourage people from close contact with wildlife, even such animals that are kept as pets.

Pingtung Rescue Center for Endangered Wild Animals

Website: http://ptrc.npust.edu.tw/

Address: 1 Hsuehfu Road, Neipu Township, Pingtung County 912

Tel: 08-7740413