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Out of Africa: A Tale of Gorillas, Heart Disease... and aSwamp Plant

Authors: DYBAS, CHERYL LYN, and RASKIN, ILYA

Source: BioScience, 57(5) : 392-397

Published By: American Institute of Biological Sciences

URL: https://doi.org/10.1641/B570503

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392 BioScience • May 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 5 www.biosciencemag.org

In the words of poet Howard Nelsonmay lie a clue to a medical mystery:Gorillas are dying, and not just in

Africa. For captive gorillas in the UnitedStates, Europe, and elsewhere, the an-swer may lie in the connections among adisease, a diet, and a plant.

The diseaseWestern lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorillagorilla) in zoos and animal parks are susceptible to an unexplained heart condition known as fibrosing cardio-myopathy, in which healthy heart muscleturns into fibrous bands unable to pumpblood. No one has kept track of exactlyhow many captive western lowland go-rillas have succumbed, but scientists arehot on the trail.Veterinarians Tom Mee-han of the Brookfield Zoo in Chicagoand Linda Lowenstine of the University

of California–Davis say that 41 percent of deaths of captive western lowland gorillas—and 70 percent of deaths of themales older than 30—are the result ofheart disease, primarily fibrosing cardio-myopathy.

The toll in 2006 alone includes at leastfour gorillas: Mopie and Kuja at the National Zoo in Washington, DC; Pogoat the San Francisco Zoo; and Tumai atthe Memphis Zoo. In previous years,there were others: Akbar at the ToledoZoo (2005), Sam at the Knoxville Zoo(2000), and Michael at the Gorilla Foun-dation in California (2000), to name buta few of the stricken gorillas.

Scientists are searching for ways oftreating fibrosing cardiomyopathy by developing better health monitoring tech-niques and more sophisticated medicalinterventions.“It might be a bacterial or

Out of Africa: A Tale of Gorillas,Heart Disease...

and a Swamp Plant

S T O RY B Y C H E RY L LY N D Y B A S

P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y I LYA R A S K I N

Captive western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) are susceptible to a heart condition

known as fibrosing cardiomyopathy. Although the cause of the disease is unknown, the captive

gorillas’ diet may be a contributing factor. Aframomum melegueta, an herbaceous perennial

plant that gorillas in the wild consume with gusto, contains substances with powerful

anti-inflammatory properties that may protect gorillas’ health.

Sitting in a restaurant eating a quiet meal,

I’m often struck by how much human beings resemble gorillas.

In these moments in restaurants,When I see a gorilla in every

chair,And the chairs are humps of

earthAnd the booths are lush booths

of vegetation,I think of kinship across three

million years...And the deep-browed gaze of the

silverback Stripping wild celery, stopping to

look up,And looking carefully around.

Howard Nelson, Gorilla Blessing(Falling Tree Press, 1993)


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www.biosciencemag.org May 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 5 • BioScience 393

viral infection of the heart that’s respon-sible,” Meehan says. “It could be a re-sponse to the stress of being in captivity,in which harmful substances called cat-echolamines are released, or something ingorillas’ diets in captivity that wild goril-las either eat or don’t eat.”

What has scientists stumped, saysLowenstine, “is that it doesn’t appear tobe related to coronary artery disease orcholesterol levels. It may be related to aprocess like inflammation, in which levels of inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein are elevated.” Levels ofC-reactive protein (CRP) rise in the presence of acute inflammation, whichcan stem from rheumatoid arthritis,cancer, pneumonia, or other diseases.Studies in humans and other animalsdemonstrate a clear link between high

levels of CRP, which is produced by theliver, and cardiomyopathy and other heartdiseases.

Autopsies performed on gorillas whohave died of fibrosing cardiomyopathyshow evidence of myocarditis, an in-flammation of the heart muscle that leadsto heart failure.“We’ve checked CRP lev-els in certain gorillas and they’ve comeback elevated,”says Meehan,“but no largestudy of CRP has been done yet in thecaptive gorilla population.”

“As far as anyone knows,” says prima-tologist Joe Erwin, director of the Foundation for Comparative and Con-servation Biology in Needmore, Penn-sylvania, wild gorillas aren’t prone toheart disease, including fibrosing car-diomyopathy, “although more study ofthe wild population is needed.” But wildgorillas, endangered in their native Africa,are under siege from other threats: habi-tat loss, the bushmeat trade, and theEbola virus. From 2001 to 2005, morethan 5000 western lowland gorillas inAfrica died from Ebola, according toMagdalena Bermejo, a primatologist atthe University of Barcelona.

“As a result, western lowland gorillas inzoos are even more important to the future of the species,”says Dan Wharton,a primatologist at the Wildlife Conser-vation Society (WCS), headquartered atthe Bronx Zoo in New York. Wharton iscoordinator of the Species Survival Plan (SSP) for the western lowland gorilla; the SSP is a zoo and aquariumpopulation management program forselected species, usually those threatenedor endangered in the wild. According tothe United Nations Environment Pro-gramme’s Great Apes Survival Project,western lowland gorillas and other gorillaspecies—eastern lowland gorillas, moun-tain gorillas, Cross River gorillas, andBwindi gorillas—may be extinct by 2050.“You have to wonder,” Wharton muses,“will our children even know what a gorilla is?”

If it’s up to the Bronx Zoo, they will.The zoo is home to 22 western lowlandgorillas, 16 females and 6 males, in ahabitat called Congo Gorilla Forest. Zuri,a 23-year-old silverback gorilla, leads oneof two gorilla troupes. Sharing the ropyvines in his enclosure is Holli, a 17-year-

old female. The “kids” scamper amongthem: Zohari, a male born in 2005; Zola,his older brother, born in 2002; and Sufi,their older sister, born in 2001. Imani, anadult female gorilla born in 1994, is alsopart of the troupe.

Zookeeper Kathy D’Andrea says thezoo has created the closest thing to anAfrican rainforest outside of Africa.“Thegorillas in what we call the ‘Great GorillaForest’ have several acres to roam aroundin.”Close your eyes, and you might thinkyou’re in the Congo. A chorus of callsfrom red-chested cuckoos, tambourinedoves, and blue monkeys echoes amongwaterfalls. Tropical plants from trees 15meters tall to diminutive orchids drapeover a visitor pathway, creating a lacycurtain. “You almost forget where youare,” says D’Andrea.

Holli, a 17-year-old female westernlowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla

gorilla), lives with 21 other gorillas inthe Bronx Zoo’s Congo Gorilla Forest, a

6.5-acre (2.6-hectare) rainforestenvironment that closely resembles

the western lowland gorillas’ nativeWest Africa. The Bronx Zoo’s gorilla

captive breeding program, the largest in the United States, produced four

babies last year, bringing the totalnumber of gorilla births at the zoo

since 1972 to 57.

Western lowland gorilla Shana, a four-year-old male, was born in the Bronx

Zoo’s Congo Gorilla Forest. Shana andother gorillas in zoos in North America

are cared for under the SpeciesSurvival Plan (SSP) for gorillas, a

program to manage the population of captive western lowland gorillas.

SSPs for threatened and endangeredspecies were initiated by the American

Zoo and Aquarium Association in1982. Most of the more than 370gorillas currently living in North

American zoos were born in 55 SSP-participating zoos.


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Not for long, though. A film on theplight of wild western lowland gorillas re-veals the stark reality of life in the realCongo.“These are the last of Africa’s wildgorillas,” states the film’s narrator, WCSbiologist Michael Fay. Gazing out fromthe Great Gorilla Forest, Holli’s browneyes meet a visitor’s.

“The captive population of gorillassoon might be all there is,”echoes veteri-narian Hayley Murphy of Zoo New Eng-land in Boston. She and humancardiologist Ilana Kutinsky of the Michi-gan Heart Group in Troy, Michigan, havestarted a National Gorilla Cardiac Data-base to track cases of fibrosing car-diomyopathy in captive western lowlandgorillas.“Regional coordinators are keep-ing tabs on the US population,”says Mur-phy, “and comparing echocardiogramsfrom healthy and sick gorillas so we canidentify the onset of the disease.” The

western lowland gorilla SSP also recom-mends that echocardiograms, the onlyreliable way of diagnosing fibrosing car-diomyopathy, be performed on captivegorillas. Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo isamong the first zoos to initiate regularechocardiogram screenings of its gorillas,says veterinarian Lee Simmons, the zoo’sdirector.

Early detection is important, accord-ing to Neal Kay, a cardiologist at the Uni-versity of Alabama at Birmingham, whoimplanted an advanced pacemaker in agorilla with the condition. Babec, a 26-year-old male western lowland gorilla atthe Birmingham Zoo, received “cardiacresynchronization therapy,”or CRT. Theprocedure corrected the breakdown inthe heart’s electrical circuitry that comeswith fibrosing cardiomyopathy and re-stored the organ’s ability to pump prop-erly. “Babec is doing great,” says Marie

Rush, a veterinarian at the zoo.“But he’sthe only gorilla we’ve been able to save.”The critical question, says Kay,“is why arethese gorillas developing the disease in thefirst place?”

The ultimate answer to captive goril-las’ heart problems may be quietly grow-ing in West Africa’s vine-choked swamps:a member of the ginger family, Aframo-mum melegueta, better known as “grainsof paradise.”This plant, which wild west-ern lowland gorillas preferentially eat,contains a powerful anti-inflammatorycompound. As scientists learn moreabout the inflammatory process thatunderlies heart disease, the lack ofAframomum and other African plants incaptive gorillas’ diets has emerged as achief suspect in their poor health.

The diet“Undoubtedly, the highest desire of everyzoological garden and park is to own andexhibit a real, live gorilla of a size suffi-ciently large to compel both admirationand awe,” wrote William Hornaday inthe January 1915 edition of the Zoologi-cal Society Bulletin, published by the NewYork Zoological Society. “The humanmind loves to contemplate, with a suitableintervention of bars, the apes that standnearest to man.”

The New York Zoological Society,now the Bronx Zoo, got the nation’s firstgorilla out of Africa in 1912. But all wasnot well: The gorilla refused to eat any ofthe foods it was offered. As described byHornaday, the gorilla was extremely un-healthy when it arrived at the zoo, fromfood refusal: “Its food preferences andaversions were at once the rage and thedespair of its keepers. Of the score ofgood things [mostly meat] offered thatgorilla, and of which it should have eaten,it partook of not one.”

Maybe because gorillas are in fact her-bivores, says Wharton.

Fables about gorillas’ carnivorous nature eventually turned out to be justthat: stories made up by imaginative earlyexplorers hacking their way throughAfrican jungles, expecting to meet upwith a “man-eating” gorilla along everynarrow, dark path.“We came to a part ofthe forest where the underwood becameso dense that we could scarcely make our

Female western lowland gorilla Julia, 26 years old, is a member of one of twotroupes of gorillas in the Bronx Zoo’s Congo Gorilla Forest. Julia is part of Zuri’s

group. Zuri is a silverback western lowland gorilla who has sired seven offspring atthe Bronx Zoo. One of Zuri’s and Julia’s offspring, Johari, was born at the Bronx

Zoo in 2005.


way through it,” wrote R. M. Ballantynein his 1862 novel The Gorilla Hunters.“Here we began to have a clearer con-ception of the creature we were in pursuitof, for it had torn down great branchesand snapped them in two as one wouldsnap a walking-cane.”

That fictional gorilla likely would havebeen peacefully nibbling on the branches’leaves, says gorilla nutritionist EllenDierenfeld of the St. Louis Zoo. No won-der the nameless 1912 New York Zoo-logical Society gorilla wasn’t interested inraw eggs with milk, or dinner brought inhot from New York City’s RockingstoneRestaurant. The meal always contained acooked-meat dish—hardly typical farefor a lowland gorilla from the swampyforests of West Africa. In 1912, zoos didn’t have the benefit of scientific stud-ies of western lowland gorillas’ diets, sayDierenfeld and primatologist MelissaRemis of Purdue University. It wasn’t un-til recently that zoos began to realize thattheir gorilla meals left something to be de-sired...by the gorillas.

According to scientist Don Cousins,who took the first hard look at the dietsof captive gorillas in 1976, western low-land gorillas once were fed everythingfrom milk and eggs in Albuquerque, tocondensed milk and raw horse meat inDallas, cooked meat and boiled eggs inLos Angeles, and sweet potatoes inTampa. Cousins sounded a warning: Stopfeeding gorillas “human food.” Today,the diets of captive gorillas at zoos like theBronx Zoo, Brookfield Zoo, and Smith-sonian National Zoological Park arecloser to those of wild gorillas, but goril-las still are not fed plants from their na-tive Africa. Some facilities, however, arelooking into the possibility of feedinggorillas African plants like Aframomum,and one is already doing it.

According to a 1997 survey Dieren-feld conducted, gorillas’ diets varied con-siderably from zoo to zoo, with morethan 115 food items on the menu. Twentydifferent vegetables were offered on aregular basis in the survey’s 37 zoos. Thenthere were 23 fruits, including apples,bananas, oranges, raisins, and tomatoes.“But cultivated fruits are usually lower infiber and higher in moisture and simplesugars than native fruits eaten by gorillas

in the wild,” says Dierenfeld. Twenty-fivetypes of greenery, or “browse,” were onthe list, as well as 18 kinds of cereals orgrains. Meat, eggs, milk, and yogurt weregiven to gorillas in several zoos: 21 zoosfed yogurt; 19 zoos, eggs; 18, milk; and 6,meat.

Aframomum, however, makes up 80to 90 percent of the diets of wild westernlowland gorillas, studies show. A symbi-otic relationship has evolved, scientists be-lieve, between western lowland gorillasand the seeds of the fruit they eat, whichpass unharmed through the gorillas’ gas-trointestinal tracts. The seeds then takeroot wherever they’re dropped, provingbeneficial to both plant and gorilla.

The plant: Grains of paradiseWestern lowland gorillas in Africa don’thave far to look for A. melegueta. Anherbaceous perennial plant, it is amongthe most common plants in the swampylowlands there. Palmlike, it forms dense

tangles and grows up to 1.5 meters high.Its trumpet-shaped, purple flowers develop into pods filled with small,reddish-brown seeds. The common namefor the plant, grains of paradise, comesfrom its seeds and dates back to the Middle Ages, when the plant was a highlyvalued commodity.

It still is vital to gorillas, who not onlyeat the plant but use it to make the nests,or beds, where they sleep each night. Thegreat apes are the sole nonhuman pri-mates to construct nests, and gorillas arethe only ones who make their nests on theground. Colin Groves, of the AustralianNational University, and J. Sabater Pi, ofParque Zoologico in Barcelona, were“struck by gorillas’ elaborate nests: theirubiquity, the regularity of their con-struction, and the skill required to makethem,” they wrote in the March 1985 issue of the journal Man. The most common type of bed made by westernlowland gorillas, the scientists found, is in

Biochemists at Rutgers University have found a powerful anti-inflammatorycompound in the seeds of the African wetland plant Aframomum melegueta, orgrains of paradise. The compound, named “006,” has been licensed by Rutgers to

Phytomedics, a New Jersey pharmaceutical company, for possible drug development.Phytomedics in turn licensed cosmetics rights to Avon Products, which will release

an 006-containing skin-care line this spring.

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patches of Aframomum. The researcherswitnessed western lowland gorillas mak-ing nighttime nests from Aframomum366 times.

In food by day and in beds by night,gorillas are virtually steeped in Aframo-mum. What, scientists have begun towonder, is so attractive about the plant?“Aframomum contains a potent anti-bacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory ‘natural drug,’” saysprimatologist Michael Huffman of Japan’sKyoto University. “The plant may be asmuch a source of preventive medicinefor gorillas as it is of food.”

Gorillas, it turns out, may eat Aframo-mum for its cardioprotective abilities. Ithas long been a favorite of native WestAfrican healers, who use its seeds to treatillnesses from coughs to toothaches tomeasles. The first record of its use onother continents appears in 1633, in abook called Gerard’s Herbal (officiallyknown as The Herbal, or General Historyof Plants), by John Gerard. (From ancient Greek times to the 17th centuryor later, botany was an adjunct of medi-cine and pharmacy. Plants were studiedfor their curative powers, and the knowl-edge was contained in books known asherbals.) According to Gerard’s Herbal,grains of paradise could “comfort andwarm the weak and cold, and rid thebody of infection.”

Those applications may soon be ex-panded, believes biochemist Ilya Raskinof Rutgers University’s Biotech Centerin New Brunswick, New Jersey. A sub-stance Raskin calls “006,” made from the seeds of A. melegueta, may prove tobe one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory substances ever discov-ered. Raskin’s work builds on earlierresearch by Nigerian scientists at the Uni-versity of Lagos College of Medicine,which showed that the plant had an anti-inflammatory effect. The compoundworks in much the same way as the

well-known drugs Vioxx, Celebrex, andBextra but, it is hoped, without their sideeffects. Rutgers has licensed rights to 006to Phytomedics, Inc., a pharmaceuticalcompany in Jamesburg, New Jersey.

Raskin and scientist Neb Ilic of Phyto-medics have, as if by alchemical magic,changed Aframomum seeds into a bronzeliquid that, when spread on an achingjoint or a small cut, makes the inflam-mation disappear. As a result of that discovery, Phytomedics licensed AvonProducts, Inc., to manufacture skin-care products that contain Aframomum,says Tolo Fridlender, president of Phyto-medics. Robert Kalafsky, executive director of skincare at Avon Global

Research and Development Center,says,“Aframomom provides strong anti-inflammatory activity and is in our 2007Solutions Hydra-Radiance line.” Avonwill release the products this spring.Ahead may be a broader anti-inflamma-tory application.

Raskin first became interested inAframomum as part of an internationalbioexploration effort to search for plantswith medicinal properties.“Aframomumcontains compounds called gingerols,which are chemically similar to otheranti-inflammatory compounds,”he says.“That chemical similarity is what ini-tially drew attention to the plant, then wasconfirmed in the lab.”

Scientists have “extraordinarily pow-erful tools now to explore biodiversity,”says Joshua Rosenthal, deputy director ofthe Division of International Trainingand Research at the National Institutes ofHealth’s Fogarty International Center.“New pharmaceuticals and other inno-vations are waiting to be discovered anddeveloped using genomics, chemical bi-ology, informatics, phylogenetics, andspatial analysis.”

With those tools, Raskin and Ilicfound that extracts from plants in theginger family, like A. melegueta, modu-late biochemical pathways activated ininflammation. Ginger extracts inhibitpro-inflammatory gene expression, in-cluding genes encoding cytokines—proteins secreted at the sites of inflam-mation—and three inflammation-caus-ing enzymes, cyclooxygenases 1 and 2(COX-1, COX-2) and a lipooxygenase(5-LOX). Ginger’s ability to inhibit bothCOX and LOX enzymes might explainwhy even high doses of ginger extractsdon’t produce the side effects often seenin drugs that act only on COX-1 andCOX-2. Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra, forexample, are COX-only inhibitors.

“With Aframomum’s anti-inflamma-tory properties and its long history ofuse as a spice in foods, and thereforesafety record,” says Raskin, “it’s likely tobe very valuable in the treatment of in-flammatory diseases.” Those diseasesrange from heart disease to cancer toarthritis.

Aframomum isn’t easy to come by,however. It grows in just one place: the

Phytomedics scientist Neb Ilic holds avial of 006, which shines like a rare

topaz under laboratory lighting. Thismay be the most powerful anti-

inflammatory compound yetdiscovered. Western lowland gorillas in

the wild preferentially eatAframomum, which makes up 80 to

90 percent of their diet and may beprotecting them against heart disease

and other illnesses.

Visit these Web sites for more information:

Global Institute for Bioexploration, Rutgers University: http://gibex.rutgers.edu

Species Survival Plan Program: www.aza.org/conscience/conscienceSSPFact

Bronx Zoo’s Congo Gorilla Forest: www.congogorillaforest.com

Primates at the National Zoo: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/Primates


swampy lowlands of West Africa’s GrainCoast. Stretching from Sherbro Island inSierra Leone to Cape Palmas in Liberia,this rain-drenched, humid land is namedfor its abundant grains of paradise. Out-side Africa, Aframomum is usually avail-able only as a hard-to-find spice. Fortheir experiments, Raskin and colleaguespurchase seeds at commercial rates fromAfrican marketplaces. The markets gettheir seeds from farmers who cultivate theplants.“If a successful medicine is madefrom this plant,” says Raskin,“the supplyof plants will come from West Africa.Aframomum would also help small farm-ers there, who could expand their culti-

vation of the plants and sell the seeds,giving farmers a value-added crop.”

The demand for Aframomum in WestAfrica is high. When a visitor arrives atsomeone’s home, the host offers a bowlof Aframomum seeds. Have West Africansmimicked habits they long ago observedin wild gorillas? “Gorillas and humanshave something important to teach eachother about what constitutes a healthydiet,” Dierenfeld believes.

Raskin and colleagues are investigatingthe connection between native Africanplants and heart disease, in people and ingorillas. Why captive western lowlandgorillas develop cardiomyopathy remains

unknown—at least for now. The solution,for all primates, may lie in Africa’s “heartof darkness,” the jungle—and for cap-tive gorillas, perhaps, in the food servedin their equivalent of a restaurant.

Cheryl Lyn Dybas (e-mail:

[email protected]) is a biologist and

science journalist who specializes in the

environment and health. Ilya Raskin

(e-mail: [email protected]) is a

professor of biology at Rutgers University

and a nature photographer.

doi:10.1641/B570503Include this information when citing this material.

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