Questions About Chimpanzees
Answered by
Elizabeth Vinson Lonsdorf

Elizabeth says...

4) What diseases do they get?

Two interesting diseases they do NOT get are malaria and AIDS. True, you've all heard that HIV came from chimps, and that's right, but chimpanzees don't develop the illness associated with the virus known as AIDS. They carry the virus, but don't get sick. We also know that they very rarely get malaria, probably because of a long developed-immunity. However, they can easily catch human illnesses because of their relatedness to us and this is a very important danger to chimps that are heavily researched and exposed to tourists. The virus that causes the common cold in us can develop into a full blown and deadly respiratory illness in chimps since they have not evolved any immunity to it. Also, chimps are well known for harboring many different types of gut parasites.