More than five years on, studies suggest the animal is the most likely culprit, but other candidates haven’t been ruled out.
This time five years ago, the virus that causes COVID-19 was spreading around the globe unchecked. One of the biggest questions that remains is: where did it come from?
Today, mounting evidence from more than a dozen studies points to a person, or people, catching the virus from a wild animal or animals at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, the city at the epicentre of the outbreak. And the animal at the top of the list is the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides).
“There is a large focus on raccoon dogs,” says Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.
Some scientists, including virologist Edward Holmes at the University of Sydney in Australia, have suspected raccoon dogs all along. On 21 January 2020, he sent an e-mail to Andersen and another colleague, with the subject ‘Outbreak poker’. In jest, he proposed a wager on the animal that might have carried the virus to people. “I’m betting raccoon dog,” he said. Holmes had seen raccoon dogs at the Huanan market when he traveled to Wuhan in 2014.
But part of the reason that raccoon dogs top the list of suspects is because they have been studied more than other animals, including ones also present at the market, says Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. There are yet more possible candidates, he says.
RightOfCenterLeft
Article URL : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00426-3?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us