TOURISTS on chimpanzee safaris appear to be sharing more than fleeting glances with the apes. A study in western Uganda provides what the researchers say is the strongest evidence yet that humans are passing potentially dangerous intestinal bacteria to the chimps.
Thomas Gillespie鈥檚 team at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, found bacteria resistant to antibiotics used by humans in faecal samples collected from chimps (Biological Conservation, DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2006.10.048). 鈥淎ntibiotic resistance is really the smoking gun,鈥� he says. 鈥淭his rules out the possibility that they have the same bacteria simply because they are living in the same environment.鈥�
