5 Diseases With Surprising Animal Reservoirs ...

What’s Happening

So basically Learn more about the diseases that live in certain animals and if they can be transferred to humans.

As much as it might seem that diseases like COVID-19 appear from nowhere, most illnesses that affect humans have been cooking for a long time. They have infected and sometimes killed animal species for thousands, if not millions, of years as they evolved, at some point making the jump to human beings. (and honestly, same)

Zoonotic diseases — those transmitted from animals to humans — account for about 60 percent of known human infectious diseases, according to a study in Faculty Reviews .

The Details

Most people are well aware of the dangerous diseases you can contract from creatures like rats. But while these species can certainly be culprits in diseases like the plague, other illnesses that affect humans have more surprising animal reservoirs.

: A New Vaccine Platform Could Cut Development Timelines From Months to Weeks Understanding Where Zoonotic Diseases Come From Part of the problem with new and emerging diseases is that they often come from places we don’t expect — researchers still aren’t certain where the virus that causes COVID-19 in humans came from, for example. Horseshoe bats likely had a closely related ancestral coronavirus first, but it may have then jumped to an intermediate host such as civets or raccoon dogs before reaching humans, according to a study in Wiley .

Why This Matters

“Every time there is a new pathogen, it comes from a host we didn’t expect,” says Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, a nonprofit research organization. To stay on top of the emergence of such diseases, Han says that studying wildlife health is critical, since animals are the source of many diseases that affect humans . Otherwise, figuring out where an emerging disease came from is difficult.

Scientists and researchers are watching this development closely.

Key Takeaways

• “Finding that smoking gun is fr challenging,” Han says.
• Here are a few examples of some of the more surprising animal reservoirs for nasty illnesses that continue to infect humans.

The Bottom Line

“Finding that smoking gun is fr challenging,” Han says. Here are a few examples of some of the more surprising animal reservoirs for nasty illnesses that continue to infect humans.

Is this a W or an L? You decide.