7 min read Has Ebola Actually Killed A Third Of The Planet's Gorillas?

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But one expert says it's impossible to pin down Ebola so precisely. "We do not have any evidence (in one direction or the other) that one-third of the great apes died from Ebola," Dr. Damien Caillaud, a gorilla behavior expert at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, told The Dodo. As he pointed out, no one knows how many chimpanzees and gorillas are left in the wild. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature notes that gorilla densities are tough to measure and lists chimpanzee population numbers as "crude." Ebola's impact may be hard to quantify, but that shouldn't diminish the fact that it is a very real threat. "We do have evidence that thousands of animals died," Caillaud said, "and that's already pretty dramatic." (jaykrow/flickr/cc by 2.0)