It may be hard to believe, but researchers are concerned that our sweet, fluffy doggy friends are a “potential reservoir” for future flu pandemics.
It may be hard to believe, but researchers are concerned that our sweet, fluffy doggy friends are a “potential reservoir” for future flu pandemics. As Rachael Rettner reports for Live Science, a new study has found that influenza viruses from pigs—which have previously transmitted dangerous strains of the flu to humans—can jump into dogs. What’s more, canine flu viruses are becoming increasingly diverse. H1N1, or swine flu, which was the cause of a 2009 pandemic, actually originated in birds. An avian virus “jumped to pigs, exchanged some of its genes with previously circulating swine viruses and then jumped from pigs into humans,” according to a statement by the American Society for Microbiology. And now scientists are seeing this pattern again—except this time, the viruses are jumping from pigs to dogs.
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