Great apes face threat from germs carried by eco-tourists

We worry about diseases from remote ecosystems coming to us, in the Ebola scenario. Public health scientists fret about zoonotic diseases that leap from animals to humans. But pathogens can travel in both directions. An article in the Guardian (UK) describes how eco-tourists spread diseases to pristine areas that are ill-adapted to the robust bugs that we're breeding in our cities. This particular outbreak killed some apes in a habitat, but as humans venture into more remote areas, perhaps more species will be vulnerable.

Image of chimp in the Leipzig Zoo by Thomas Lersch (Wikimedia Commons).