Island of the Apes

Early last week scientists discovered an island occupied by 150,000 lowland gorillas. Though the ape population of the Congo had originally been believed to be as low as 50,000 due to an ebola outbreak, scientists are pleased with the finding that brings the devastated population numbers up to over 200,000. This is really exciting news but a great reminder that they are still in great danger of extinction, as are over 70% of ape species. The greatest threat to our primate relatives is in fact, ourselves. Human activity has been proven to be the cause of the dwindling populations.

To keep this on a lighter note, it is a great possibility that this discovery is not the only "secret" yet uncovered by scientists.

"I think the lesson for conservationists today is that, yes, the world is full of surprises. There's a lot of uncharted territory there in central Africa, there may be other populations," Jillian Miller, executive director of the Gorilla Organization, an international conservation group. said in an interview with CNN.

Asked how such a huge population of gorillas could go unnoticed by scientists, Miller said: "We're talking about the Congo Basin rainforest here. It is vast, it is huge, it's second only to the Amazon. And it's impenetrable."

Cool- assuming that they will leave these creatures in their natural habitats and not take groups in for testing & experiments, I am excited to see what they find next!