What is monkeypox? A microbiologist explains what’s known about this smallpox cousin

Tarsiers are the only extant obligate carnivorous primates, exclusively eating insects, crustaceans, small vertebrates and snakes . Solitary species – often males who defend territories that include the home ranges of several females. This type of organization is found in the prosimians such as the slow loris. Orangutans do not defend their territory but effectively have this organization.

Once the drone came into view, some of the monkeys produced an alarm call that the researchers had not heard in their prior 8 years of study in the park. The team recorded the calls and repeated the experiment with two other troops of green monkeys. Days after the drone flights, the researchers played an audio recording of the drone, which caused the monkeys to sound the alarm and scan the sky. But I think it’s the best time to be on the alert at the ports of entry, especially for people from countries where cases are reported. Studies done in Nigeria in the the 1980s and more recently in the 1990s provide evidence of possible previous infections with Marburg virus — or a related virus — in certain Nigerian populations. This leads me to believe that the virus is probably more widespread than we think it is.

In Africa, evidence of monkeypox virus infection has been found in many animals including rope squirrels, tree squirrels, Gambian pouched rats, dormice, different species of monkeys and others. The natural reservoir of monkeypox has not yet been identified, though rodents are the most likely. Eating inadequately cooked meat and other animal products of infected animals is a possible risk factor. People living in or near forested areas may have indirect or low-level exposure to infected animals. The primate skull has a large, domed cranium, which is particularly prominent in anthropoids. The cranium protects the large brain, a distinguishing characteristic of this group.

The name “pygmy” was given by the German zoologist Ernst Schwarz in 1929, who classified the species on the basis of a previously mislabeled bonobo cranium, noting its diminutive size compared to chimpanzee skulls. The bonobo is distinguished by relatively long legs, pink lips, dark face, tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted long hair on its head. The bonobo is found in a 500,000 km2 area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central Africa. The species is frugivorous and inhabits primary and secondary forests, including seasonally inundated swamp forests.

Researchers believe that human-to-human transmission is mostly through inhalation of large respiratory droplets rather than direct contact with bodily fluids or indirect contact through clothes. Human-to-human transmission rates for monkeypox have been limited. Primates are used as model organisms in laboratories and have been used in space missions. Capuchin monkeys can be trained to assist quadriplegic humans; their intelligence, memory, and manual dexterity make them ideal helpers. Only humans are recognized as persons and protected in law by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The legal status of NHPs, on the other hand, is the subject of much debate, with organizations such as the Great Ape Project campaigning to award at least some of them legal rights.

Mothers will help their sons get more matings from females in oestrus. Bonobos are unusual among apes for their matriarchal social structure (extensive overlap between the male and spur thesaurus female hierarchies leads some to refer to them as gender-balanced in their power structure). Bonobos do not have a defined territory and communities will travel over a wide range.

It is spread through contact with materials of an infected host or reservoir. In the case of the monkeys from Uganda imported into Marburg, laboratory staff obviously got infected through contact with the tissues and the blood of the monkeys. The Conversation Africa’s Wale Fatade and Usifo Omozokpea asked virologist Oyewale Tomori about its origin and how people can protect themselves against the disease.

While monkeypox is rare and usually non-fatal, one version of the disease kills around 10% of infected people. The form of the virus currently circulating is thought to be milder, with a fatality rate of less than 1%. To test the green monkey’s response to a new aerial threat, researchers flew a drone over a troop of the monkeys in Niokolo-Koba National Park in Senegal.