An adolescent male chimpanzee at Lincoln Park Zoo has died after a mysterious upper respiratory infection swept through all seven members of the group he lived with late last week.
Kipper, a 9-year-old and the youngest member of a group headed by a male chimp named Hank, died Tuesday in the zoo hospital, where he had been taken a day earlier as his condition worsened.
Daniel Gaffney, 2, and his mother Fiona of Chicago, interact with Kipper at the Lincoln Park Zoo last March. (Chicago tribune photo by Nancy Stone)
The surviving six chimps in the group remain ill and in isolation from all other chimps and gorillas that reside in the zoo's Regenstein Center for African Apes. The affected group is the chimp family normally on public view at the ape house. Zoo officials said none of the six appears gravely ill at this time.
A necropsy performed on Kipper after he died indicated the cause of death as pneumonia, said Steve Thompson, the zoo's vice president of conservation progrtams. The pneumonia apparently developed after keepers first noticed Kipper and others in his group displaying "flu-like symptoms" last Thursday, Thompson said.
Whatever caused the respiratory ailment is still unknown. Great apes like chimpanzees and gorillas suffer the same sorts of respiratory diseases as humans, he said.
To guard against the zoo's chimps and gorillas contracting diseases from the zoo staff, any human coming in direct contact with the animals must follow a strict protocol, he said, always wearing masks, special clothing and sterilized footwear, Thompson said. There is also a possibility that an infected wild animal, like a squirrel or bird, came into the chimp's outdoor space and passed the malady on.
On Thursday keepers reported the members of Hank's group showed signs of runny noses and listlessness.
As the symptoms persisted over the weekend, the zoo took Hank's group off display and put them in quarantine quarters in the ape house lower level, isolating them from the other chimp group and two gorilla families that also reside in the ape house. Though the facility has no true isolation ward, the ill and healthy animals are kept on opposite sides of the building and keepers follow a protocol of a complete clothing change when moving between groups.
After going into isolation with the rest of the group, Kipper, who suffered from a congenital condition that may have decreased the pumping capacity of his lungs, on Monday took a turn for the worse, Thompson said.
"He was sounding like he had trouble breathing, and he hadn't eaten or drunk much," Thompson said, showing pneumonia-like symptoms. "He was taken to the zoo hospital, where the vets sedated him to treat with fluids and put him on antibiotics.
"He was under round-the-clock observation, and early Tuesday seemed improved. He was moving around and knew his surroundings, recognized his keepers and the vets. But at some point he was left alone for 15 to 20 minutes, and when somebody checked on him, he had stopped breathing and couldn't be revived. This is the kind of pneumonia condition that is difficult to treat in humans and non-human primates."
Zoo officials remain concerned enough about the other members of Hank's group that they will continue to stay under around the clock observation in quarantine.
"Some seem to be well on the way to recovery, others still have a serious respiratory condition," said Thompson, "so we are watching them very closely, with antibiotic treatments."
None of the other apes in the building - two gorilla families and a second chimpanzee group - thus far has shown any symptoms of the disease.
The ape house remains open and its gorillas are on public view, though the habitat usually occupied by Hank's group is empty. Hank's group remain under 24-hour surveillance and treatment in their basement quarters. The second chimp group remains in its off-viewing quarters where it normally lives.
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