Coronavirus Pandemic: Great Ape Populations at Risk

The coronavirus pandemic may wipe out the last populations of great apes, experts warn.

The virus could deliver the final blow to great apes already critically threatened with extinction.

Orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees, which share approximately 98% of their DNA with humans, are so similar to us that they have repeatedly been used in pharmaceutical research.This similarity could now once again prove to be their undoing.The fact that Covid-19 can be fatal for humans leads scientists to fear that the respiratory disease could also prove fatal for great apes. Orangutans are generally particularly susceptible to respiratory illnesses, meaning there is a risk that Covid-19 could affect them even more severely than it does us.

Eight of the estimated 100,000 wild orangutans still living in Borneo are currently part of a rehabilitation programme run by the global animal welfare organisation FOUR PAWS. The orphaned orangutans are raised at the FOUR PAWS FOREST SCHOOL in eastern Borneo and prepared for a future life in the wild. Dr. Signe Preuschoft, primatologist, and her Indonesian team are extremely concerned about their small charges: “Having already experienced so much suffering in their young lives, our orphaned orangutans should be able to grow up safely until they are old enough to be released back into the wild. We will do everything in our power to protect them from infection with the coronavirus.”»

As the number of coronavirus infections is also slowly increasing in Indonesia, there is a risk that infected animal caregivers could pass the virus on to the orphaned orangutans. «Although there is a general no-contact policy in place at the ORANGUTAN FOREST SCHOOL, so that no one enters the forest school who is not involved in the care and upbringing of the orphans, our orangutans do occasionally have physical contact with their human surrogate mothers. How often depends on the age of the orangutans. The older orphans are already relatively independent, foraging for their own food and sitting high up in the trees. Physical contact with their caregivers is rare. The younger ones, however, need physical affection. They cling to their surrogate mothers. They want to cuddle and be comforted when they are frightened», says Dr. Preuschoft.

The team has already put safety measures in place: all animal caregivers change into their work clothes when they arrive at the forest school and do not take them home. The work clothes are washed on site and the caregivers wear protective masks. «We wash the purchased food twice: when it is delivered and before we give it to the orangutans. In addition, the same groups of two to three people work together and avoid contact with the others. We keep our team up to date virtually and share information so that everyone at home also adheres to strict hygiene rules and isolates themselves from social contacts outside of work», says Dr. Preuschoft.

The forest school team has also stockpiled food and cleaning supplies. Some supplies, however, are difficult to obtain. Secure face masks (N95), infrared thermometers and disinfectants are practically no longer available in Indonesia. «Unfortunately, there is no one-hundred-percent protection. Human children are generally not particularly severely affected by coronavirus symptoms, so we hope that the same will be true for our orphaned orangutans», says Dr. Preuschoft.