A New Tool for Studying Gorilla Health: Half-Chewed Food

In the mountains of Central Africa, scientists who study critically endangered gorillas have a new tool. They've discovered that they can learn what viruses gorillas are carrying by stealthily collecting half-chewed plants the apes leave behind. If this sounds reminiscent of that class clown at the third-grade lunch table who would ask if you liked seafood and then say "See? Food!" and open his mouth wide to display his sloppy Joe slurry, don't worry—mountain gorillas are vegetarians. And researchers aren't looking inside the animals' mouths. They decided to search gorillas' plant scraps for viruses exactly because they don't want to get too close. Tierra Smiley Evans, of the "Gorilla Doctors" at UC Davis, and her coauthors explain that the existing ways to check gorillas for viruses aren't great. Scientists can take blood from the animals, or swab their mouths or rectums. But these procedures require trapping an animal and knocking ...