Monkeys are more susceptible to disease when near people

Chimpanzees who live near people often have to find ways to find their own cigarettes to cure their illnesses. These are the medicinal plants used to treat diseases caused by intestinal parasites brought by humans and livestock.

For a long time, the scientists have known that monkeys like humans are capable of self-healing. Whenever outbreaks of parasites seasonally, they often find the leaves of certain medicinal plants, helping them clean the intestines from parasitic insects.

Zoologists from Oxford University observed that when these monkeys lived near humans and cattle, they often had to heal themselves more often.

Chimpanzees live next to people who are very prone to intestinal diseases.

Researchers have closely watched the chimpanzees of Uganda living around villages as well as farming and breeding areas. It is also possible to call them 'village chimpanzees' because they live quite close to the rural people.

Analysis of animal diets showed that they had to eat more than 10 times the number of medicinal plant leaves that were completely wild to fight intestinal parasites.

According to scientists, it is because living near people has made them suffer from new diseases. Specifically, they are very susceptible to flukes, a parasite typical of poultry, brought about. It seems that understanding that, there are those who have dropped into the deep forest to avoid the "civilized region". This study is published in the American Journal of Primatology.

People compare this phenomenon with a phenomenon that has happened in history. During the conquest of South America, it was the Europeans who transmitted to the Indians the diseases and the unprecedented local people, so in their bodies there are no immune factors to protect themselves. New diseases caused the death of millions of aborigines in the continent in the 18th century.

Ecologists warn that the opposite effect can be foreseen: monkey parasites are also found in the human body, in a new environment, much more convenient. Therefore, the movement of people into deep forests in African forests to exploit farmland is potential for new infections, new diseases on a large scale that the consequences have not been foreseen.