3 ms·
How likely is it that a virus evolved for living in civet cats just happened to evolve to also be pathogenic in bats and humans?
by stupendousyappi 6y ago
How likely is it that a virus evolved for living in civet cats just happened to evolve to also be pathogenic in bats and humans?
- mullingitover 6y agoWe get infected by bird viruses all the time, and they're not even mammals. A virus that evolved in mammals infecting different types of mammals is very likely.
- rsynnott 6y agoQuite likely; we’re pretty closely related to those, and multiple species viruses show up all the time. It would be more surprising, though, to find a virus which was pathogenic to, say, both us and archaea, and any Venus life is probably more different to us than archaea are. A bacteria analogue is possibly more of a risk; those can be less fussy.
- aortega 6y agoNot likely, except if it were somehow, coerced to evolve, like, in a lab.