As an avid traveller and a lover of wild life and especially Monkeys to hear that they are dying is very sad.

Every Christmas for many years the monkeys would bound on to our balcony in Kenya and before we knew it the full family would be there and entertain us.


https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/27173019/howler-dead-from-yellow-fever-1-sergio-mendes-projeto-muriqui-es.jpg

This  outbreak apparently started in late 2016 and all of the authorities have rushed vaccines to hospitals to help this tragic situation.

But the worst issue is that there is  no vaccine as yet.

Over  80  per cent of the brown howler monkeys are infected or have already died, which is a massive catastrophe. These outbreaks happen periodically, but this is the worst in a long time.

Yellow fever is killing these poor animals in Brazil..

The virus is normally found in  forest-dwelling mammals,  and is transmitted by  mosquitoes.

The present situation is that  the current outbreak is unlikely to be caused by a new, more virulent form of yellow fever virus, as it is known to mutate very slowly.

But what causes this?

Apparently  prolonged and torrential rains provide ideal conditions for mosquitoes which is compounding the problem. A weeks  rain in a day is terrible but over a month may have weakened the monkeys by cutting the times when they can feed and challenging their total  immune systems.

With monkeys being key seed-dispersers, the prognosis for both forest and primates is not good. Meanwhile, as the epidemic increases, ill-informed moronic  people  have started attacking the region’s monkeys, in the stupid  belief that they can spread yellow fever to humans directly which is clearly not the case.

Images Courtesy of newscientist