Question: can animals be infected with the aids virus?

Hi Lachy99,
HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus, and AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. HIV and AIDS are actually different things – infection with the HIV virus can lead to the development of the disease AIDS in humans (there are actually several strains of HIV), but it doesn’t always (a lot of people who are infected with HIV don’t ever actually develop AIDS, because of drug treatments that are available to try to keep the virus under control).
Chimpanzees (which are very closely related to humans – we share ~99% of our DNA) have actually been found to be infected with the HIV virus (possibly some other related primates as well, but I’m not sure – humans are also primates). There is a related disease called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that is known to affect over 30 species of African primates. HIV is thought to have evolved from SIV, so the viruses are very similar, as are the species that they infect, which is why it is possible for HIV to infect closely related species as well as humans, and why humans can be infected with SIV.
Other animals that are not closely related to primates can’t actually be infected with HIV or SIV, but some of them do have their own species-specific version of this type of virus. An example of this is feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), which affects cats.