Child's play among wild chimpanzees may spread deadly outbreaks to the rest of the family. A 22-year study of respiratory disease epidemics among chimps has found that death and disease spikes when numerous chimps neared 2 and a half years old – the age at which young apes frolic the most. "Chimps pull hair and roll together, but then afterwards they come back to the mother," says Christophe Boesch, a primatologist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germanyץ. (source: newscientist.com)
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