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A new study from Washington University in St. Louis found that the gut makeup of apes living in US zoos more closely resembles that of people who eat a non-Western diet when compared to the intestinal bacteria of their wild ape cousins.
Study details
Without disturbing the subjects, researchers followed apes in known groups and discreetly plucked fecal samples from 18 wild chimpanzees and 28 wild gorillas in Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo. The research team also obtained fecal samples from 81 people who lived on the outskirts of the park.
At the same time, the researchers in the US collected fecal samples from 18 chimpanzees and 15 gorillas living at either the St. Louis Zoo or the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.
Going the distance
The fecal samples from the Republic of Congo had quite a journey ahead. They were stored in liquid nitrogen, carried to the park headquarters, and transported by dugout canoe down the Sangha River and then by truck to Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, where they were held in a freezer until they could be shipped to a lab in the US.
The research team studied the samples and identified various bacteria and the antibiotic genes present in the gorilla, chimpanzee and human samples. From there, they compared their findings to publicly available data on people who live in the US, Peru, El Salvador, Malawi, Tanzania, or Venezuela and maintain hunter-gatherer, rural agriculturalist, or urban lifestyles.
Findings
The study found that contact with people influences the gut microbial communities of gorillas and chimpanzees.
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