If you're in a mood for payback after the pandemic, read this.
Animals get a bad rap for giving humans pandemic viruses. Cave bats are getting the brunt of the blame for the two-year covid nightmare we’ve all experienced.
But maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to blame …
Research published in Ecology Letters describes close to 100 instances where diseases have undergone “spillback” from humans into wild animals.
One example is SARS-CoV-2, which has gone from humans and then back into mink farms, zoo lions and tigers, and wild white-tailed deer.
Almost half of these bug jumps that have been identified occured in zoos where vets are around to notice animals are getting sick.
More than half of the viral transmissions were human-primate leaps.
“There has understandably been an enormous amount of interest in human-to-wild animal pathogen transmission in light of the pandemic,” says Dr Gregory Albery, biologist at Georgetown University and the study’s senior author.
“To help guide conversations and policy surrounding spillback of our pathogens in the future, we went digging through the literature to see how the process has manifested in the past.”
AI could be used to predict which species were most at risk from catching human diseases, as shown through the examples of predictions made earlier during the covid outbreak, the research showed.
“We’re watching SARS-CoV-2 more closely than any other virus on earth, so when spillback happens, we can catch it,” said Dr Colin Carlson, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University Medical Center and an author on the study.
Other diseases are trickier to track as wild animals are, well, wild.
If you’ve given your cat covid, confess to felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au
