22 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: Are there any plagues in domesticated animals that came from human-borne diseases?
Human influenza viruses spread to domestic animals quite often, and have become endemic in pigs. The human influenza viruses themselves originated in birds, but may have cycled through pigs before as well as after humans in some cases.
COVID is endemic in white-tailed deer (not domestic animals, but perhaps relevant to your question).
Vaccinia virus, whose animal origin is unknown but was probably a rodent (it's not cowpox, for all the well-actually keyboards being fired up) is the parent of Buffalopox, a fairly common disease of Asian Buffalos; it's also a cause of infections of cattle in South America. In both cases, human infections have arise from buffalo/cattle contact, so the path goes something like rodent -> cattle -> human via vaccine -> cattle/buffalo -> human.
Yellow fever has spread into South American primates, from humans.
I'm less familiar with bacterial and parasitic diseases. I'm pretty sure that malaria has spilled over from humans into South American monkeys, and tuberculosis is a common reverse zoonosis.
Some other examples are mentioned in Reverse Zoonotic Disease Transmission (Zooanthroponosis): A Systematic Review of Seldom-Documented Human Biological Threats to Animals[1], among other places.
1: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3938448/
Comment by PHealthy at 25/11/2024 at 03:51 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Don't forget zoo animals, COVID definitely showed transmission
Comment by horsetuna at 25/11/2024 at 11:46 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Not sure if they count as domestic but iirc ferrets can catch human flu.
Comment by KingAmongstDummies at 25/11/2024 at 13:41 UTC
2 upvotes, 2 direct replies
There was a huge influenza outbreak worldwide in the early 1900's.
From what I remember reading of this there were millions of casualties and the mortality rate was incredibly high.
Obviously most reports were about human deaths but I do recall vaguely from some talk show that part of the reason the epidemic lasted for so long was that it was jumping back and forth between humans and animals. This bit might not be accurate though but with how commonly stuff like the flue spreads to pets it isn't hard to believe it at least was a contributing factor whatever it's actual share.