Two items in New Scientist recently:
Bad news for baboons in Southern Africa.
A "herpes-like" infection is making their genitals... fall right off.
Quote: The disease targets the reproductive organs of the primate. The consequences for male baboons are particularly gruesome, says Elibariki Mtui, of the African Wildlife Foundation in Arusha, Tanzania. "The genitals kind of rot away, then they just drop off," he told New Scientist.
The disease first appeared a month ago and while cases seem to be confined to Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania, there are fears it will spread from the affected troops of olive baboons to others nearby. "People are really concerned that it could be an epidemic," says Mtui. Wardens at the park confirm that some of the infected males had died.
"If it's sexually transmitted then it could spread," agrees Dee Carey, head veterinarian at the Southwest National Primate Research Centre in San Antonio, Texas. Baboons live in troops of up to 100 animals and although the females stay put within each "family", the males wander between them. But with so little information on the disease, says Carey, it is difficult to evaluate the risks.
If it spreads to the human population, however, (or if philanthropists decide to replace the missing parts of wild baboons), there is hope. Researchers have grown replacement penises, complete with nerve cells.
Quote: The secret to regrowing the nerve cells is mimicking nature, explains Atala. His team began by building millimetre-wide collagen channels. These replicate the sheaths that, like the insulation around a bundle of electrical wires, surround nerves in the body.
The team then cut away the nerve cells in the penises of live rats and sewed the collagen channels to the severed nerve stumps. After three months, functional nerve cells one centimetre long had grown inside the channels.
The physical support from the collagen appeared to be all that was needed to coax the nerve cells into growing. The collagen-supported cells grew just as well as nerves that were grafted on in experiments conducted for comparison.
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