How many viruses are there that humans transmit to animals?? We know that some of humanity’s most dangerous diseases have come from pathogens that “made the leap” from the animal world to ours. To give some examples, Covid, which most likely came from bats, or HIV from chimpanzees.
However, during the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks have also occurred in farmed minkwhich had been infected by people.
The study that calculated how many viruses humans transmit to animals
However, a new study shows that this situation is not one-way. An analysis of all the genome sequences of the cataloged viruses demonstrates a surprising result: humans pass almost twice as many viruses to animals as they pass to us.
The study was carried out by University College London. You can read the results in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Millions of viruses analyzed by researchers
The researchers have analyzed nearly 12 million virus genomes and they identified nearly 3,000 examples of viruses that jumped from one species to another.
Of these, 79% concerned the transition from one animal species to another. The remaining 21% involved humans. Of these, 64% were human viruses that passed to animalsknown as anthroponosis, against 36 who did the reverse routecalled zoonoses.
How many viruses are there that humans transmit to animals?? Those who live near or with us are more at risk
Animals affected by viruses of human origin also include dogs and cats, as well as pigs, horses, birds such as chickens and ducks, monkeys and other wild animals. This demonstrates humanity’s enormous impact on the environment around us.
Both humans and animals host a very high number of microbes that can pass from one species to another through close contact.
What characteristics must a virus have to make the jump to species?
Before a virus can make the jump to species, it must has the necessary biological tools or undergo specific adaptations to penetrate the cells of the new species.
The main reason why species jumps can be so devastating is because the host species population has no pre-existing immunity to the new diseaseas we learned from Covid.
Another particularly infamous species leap was that of over the bubonic plague, which killed millions of people. This disease, which is now treatable if caught in time, it was caused by a bacterium that normally circulated in wild rodents. The Ebola virus also came from the animal world.
Many transmissions from one species to another are fortunately irrelevant. In most cases, a virus may be harmless on other species.