Photography and reporting from Manaus, Brazil, by Dado Galdieri of Hilaea Media.
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
When Marcelo Gordo opens the picnic cooler, the stench is suffocating. Three dead pied tamarin monkeys, their cream-and-caramel-colored coats visible through plastic wrap, are curled up inside. Gordo, a biologist at the Federal University of Amazonas, Manaus, explains that a student accidentally unplugged the freezer where he’d stored the monkeys, which had been killed on the road and given to him by city officials. Despite the decay, they are worth investigating.
Inside the spartan necropsy room at a veterinary school here, veterinarian Alessandra Nava and two graduate students pull on goggles, N95 masks, and blue nitrile gloves and begin to cut bits of tissue and collect bodily fluids from the monkeys. They pack the samples into vials to be transported to the Fiocruz Amazônia Biobank, a pathogen research collection that Nava helps oversee at the Amazonian regional office of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a branch of Brazil’s Ministry of Health more commonly known as Fiocruz. There, she and others will test the samples for parasitic worms, viruses, and other infectious agents.