According to a new study, mountain gorillas are severely inbred. As per researchers, about 880 mountain gorillas are only left in the wild in just two areas.

The areas are Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and the Virunga mountains on the borders of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to experts, Mountain gorillas are among closest relatives of man.

For the study, blood samples of seven gorillas living in the forests of the Virunga volcanic mountain range have been taken by the researchers. It was found by the researchers that their close knit populations are suffering from inbreeding at a level that might lead to extinction. As per the experts, mountain gorillas inherit identical DNA segments from parents in about one-third of their genome.

According to Geneticist Chris Tyler-Smith of Britain’s Welcome Trust Sanger Institute, they have found very high levels of inbreeding. The researchers said that the apes are already seriously endangered because of habitat loss, hunting and diseases transmitted by humans. Inbreeding can put them more at risk of disease or environmental change.

“Mountain gorillas are critically endangered and at risk of extinction, and our study reveals that as well as suffering a dramatic collapse in numbers during the last century, they had already experienced a long decline going back many thousands of years”, said Aylwyn Scally, University of Cambridge geneticist.

According to researchers, there is a hope and fewer of the most harmful mutations are there than in other gorillas. As per Dr. Scally, they can carry on to live and can also come back to larger numbers if helped.

This new understanding of genetic diversity and demographic history among gorilla populations has helped the researchers get valuable insight into how apes and humans, their closely related cousins, adapt genetically to living in small populations.