This Is What Studying the Wildlife Trade Has Taught Me About the Spread of Disease
The coronavirus pandemic has already altered daily life beyond recognition. It will shape our lives for years to come, mostly in ways that are impossible to predict, let alone understand. Esquire asked twenty people to share their experiences in the first few months of the outbreak. Each of their first-person accounts is a reassurance that none of us are facing this alone. Check out the full list here.
We’ve been studying the wildlife trade for more than a decade. We recently found that as you follow a rat from the field to a market and then into a restaurant, there’s an increase in coronaviruses. Our hypothesis is that as the rat moves along, it gets very stressed, which compromises its immune system. It starts shedding viruses as it meets other animals along the trade chain. Such interactions reassort these viruses, create new ones. Then the person who slaughters the animal is exposed.
The first tiger at the Bronx Zoo tested positive a couple of weeks after the release of this Netflix series Tiger King. So the news got a lot of traction.
I haven’t seen the show. I’m European, so that it’s possible to privately own tigers, or any kind of wildlife—that’s just appalling.
Nadia: Name of the tiger that first contracted COVID-19 at WCS’s flagship park, the Bronx Zoo
The number of big cats at the zoo that have tested positive: Eight (five tigers and three lions)
At the moment, all research indicates that while cats—domesticated or otherwise—are able to contract the virus, they develop a very mild sickness. There’s no indication right now that cats, or dogs, can transmit it back to us.
My father sent me a message when the news broke about Nadia: “I thought social distancing from big cats was the norm.” And that’s the point. In the wild, if you’re closer than six feet to a tiger, the last of your worries will be the coronavirus.
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