Could Vaccinating Gorillas Be Our Best Shot To Stop a Pandemic?

The “gorilla holocaust” began in October 2002. Or at least, that’s how Joseph Oyange and Selah Abong’o, a pair of Congolese naturalists, describe what happened.

In the dense jungle in the Republic of Congo’s north that fall, they hacked through tangled undergrowth with machetes, swatting away mosquitoes from their sweaty faces. Two hours later, they found Meely, a young female gorilla they had encountered often since the late 1990s. But Meely, usually lively and curious, lay motionless on her back, her eyes vacant, gazing up at the canopy.

Something had killed her. But what? After conducting a makeshift autopsy there on the forest floor, Oyange and Abong’o remained puzzled. There were no wounds to indicate an attack by a leopard, hyena or even poacher. Oyange reasoned that poor Meely must have been bitten by a venomous snake, like a Gaboon viper. But their theory was soon ruled out when the duo found another dead gorilla — this time an older male who, like Meely, showed no visible signs of how he died. Soon they discovered another corpse, then another.