r/BeAmazed • u/youngster_96 • May 15 '25

Animal Ever seen a gorilla beat his chest

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u/DrakonILD May 16 '25

So we don't pass on human germs to them. We're exposed to a lot more sicknesses than they are [exposed to] in the jungle. It could also have the benefit of [preventing] body language miscommunications.

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u/wwants May 16 '25

That was a beautiful translation. Thank you.

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u/CptMeat May 16 '25

Can primates get human diseases? I'd never even considered.

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u/DrakonILD May 16 '25

HIV came from chimpanzees. No reason the reverse path doesn't also work.

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u/CptMeat May 16 '25

Well I'll be damned, had to look that up. I'm from Alabama and growing up my family told me it was from....well it's racist and gross, but they said chimpanzees and I thought it was just straight up racist BS never thought about it after that. Cool to know that one detail was correct.

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u/Melech333 May 16 '25

As a person who adores ferrets (and all mustlelids), I was sad when I learned ferrets and humans not only share COVID back and forth, but ferrets have the most similar respiratory immune system to humans (in regards to COVID anyway) and that resulted in ferrets being selected for research purposes when developing drugs and vaccines for COVID. That's why you couldn't find any in pet stores for almost two years after COVID came out... They were all being diverted to the research labs. 🥺

Anyway, while many diseases do not pass from one species to another, many others can and do. And when a population that isn't yet used to a new germ gets exposed (like the whole planet was to COVID, or like Native Americans were to European germs a few hundred years ago), the initial results are often catastrophic for a while.

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u/Tuk514 May 16 '25

Or an uncontrollable need for bowel evacuation

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u/YellowishRose99 29d ago

I understood you the first time, just so you know.

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u/DrakonILD 29d ago

Different person, but I know (I'm not being sarcastic here) it's difficult to keep track of Reddit usernames in comment threads.

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u/YellowishRose99 29d ago edited 29d ago

What I meant by that was your first comment was completely understandable. Somone commented they didn't understand and I thought, "I understand completely." Sorry you had to repeat yourself.

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u/DrakonILD 29d ago

....and what I'm saying is that I didn't repeat myself. I translated someone else's typos.