Leukemia in Primates?

My friends capuchin was diagnosed with leukemia. I was reading on a medical site that two types of leukemia are familar to one another, the murine and the feline. They refer to them as viruses. Can another animal such as a new world monkey contract a leukemia virus from a cat or other infected animal. Is the leukemia virus like the flu virus, and can be caught by being around them, and how if this is true?

Here's where you;ll find the best info on leukemia:
http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/hm_lls
Best wishes

Viruses do not easily cross between species. They are normally extremely specific to one species. Some types of viruses, like flu, will cross from one species to another in a relatively short time in the presence of a certain chain of infection. Ex: It is known that the influenza virus crosses from birds to humans in the presence of pigs.

The leukemia virus does not exist in primates, but only in cats (domestic or big cats) and mice ('murine' means mouse). It is a highly specific virus of the same family as the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), or cat AIDS. No case of transmission of these viruses to humans have ever been reported despite prolonged contact between infected animals and humans. Human HIV would originate, or have common origins, with these much older viruses. But then again it probably took another unknown chain of infection, and several thousand years. And so now they are completely different viruses, and HIV cannot infect cats, FIV cannot infect humans.

Leukemia, and other cancers, can happen without a virus. It does in humans, and probably in other primates as well. In that case it is not contagious. You don't need to be afraid to catch it, as you do not need to be afraid to catch leukemia from a human kid.