Name: Why tigers get coronavirus but your dog will be fine
Uploaded: 2020-07-31T18:10:03.000Z
Duration: 6 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey guys I'm Cleo. I'm a producer here at Vox and I'm also the host of Vox's

first-ever daily show. It's called Answered, it's on a new

streaming app called Quibi and every day we take on a question about this

confusing moment that we're living through. So now I get to share with you

guys one of my favorite episodes so far. Here we go.

By now you've probably heard of Nadia the tiger but if not allow me to

A tiger at a zoo in New York has tested positive for coronavirus

Researchers think that she caught it from a human zookeeper.

year old Nadia her sister Azul, two amur Tigers and three lions all developed dry

Don't worry. Nadia's doing a lot better now but her illness highlighted

something about the virus itself it's zoonotic. That means it can transmit

Now the bond between a Pomeranian and its owner may

The study showed Winston the family's fun-loving

According to the CDC and the US Department of Agriculture

two cats in separate parts of New York tested positive.

Which animals can catch coronavirus? Should I be worried about my

pet? I'm Cleo Abram and this is answered by Vox.

seen that can be infected by COVID-19, they don't have very serious symptoms .

That's Dr. William Karesh.  He's a wildlife veterinarian and an

I have a dog. Should I be worried about my dog?

No. You should not be worried about your dog.

pick up the virus but the virus doesn't grow very well in dogs.

that dogs have it just out of curiosity because the people in the homes were

very sick and they thought well let's just test the dogs and see if they might

have it. And they picked up the virus but the dogs weren't sick.

Cats seem to be more susceptible and cats can actually infect other cats

While it is possible for our pets to get very mild cases of COVID-19

the CDC says "The risk of animals spreading COVID-19 to people

So it seems like we can take our pets getting sick or

transmit between humans and animals so researchers are trying to figure out

Once the virus breaks into an animal's body

it needs to fit itself inside a special receptor on the target cell called ACE2

the virus and receptor act kind of like a lock and key.

The more easily the SARS-CoV2 virus latches on to a species ACE2 receptor,

the more likely that animal is to become infected.

Each species' ACE2 receptor is a little bit different,

The virus is more likely to bind in humans, camels, cats, pangolins and bats

but less likely in rats, mice, chickens and guinea pigs.

which which animals can it bind to,  but it's not the whole story because we know

that pigs actually don't have a productive infection even though they

Which is why so many animals are susceptible to the

conclusions but it's a beautiful start to a way to look at susceptibility.

The ACE2 receptor is really only an indicator of whether or not an animal

can become infected with coronavirus. It doesn't tell us anything about how

coronavirus can spread between humans and animals.

I've heard people talk about bats, about pangolins,

So I'm wondering what do we know for sure

about how COVID-19 got from animals to humans?

Well right now we don't know what the original animal source was.

very similar to COVID-19 like all it's kissing cousins and his brothers and

Many of the viruses that make us sick originally

came from the animal kingdom. The common cold originated in camels.

Many strains of flu come from pigs and birds.

HIV transferred to humans from a chimpanzee.

Ebola, SARS, Marburg, Nipah, and COVID-19 have all been linked to bats.

Is there a specific reason why these diseases come from bats as opposed

there are a lot of viruses for one thing. And then another is genetically,

they're closer to people than a lot of other animals are.

So the viruses of course then, it's easier to share viruses with things you're related to like

humans and gorillas can share a lot more viruses than anybody else.

Why is it though that when a virus like SARS-CoV2 jumps from animals to people it's so

deadly to us whereas it's less so to the original host animal?

All of us have viruses and bacteria living on us and we have grown used to them and over the

millennia we've actually evolved to use them when we spread them among species

Over the last hundred years,  the number of zoonotic diseases in people has been increasing.

disease emerges in humans every four months and 75% of them come from animals.

Zoonotic diseases have been around as long as there have been people and

animals together. What's new is what we call these new emerging infectious

diseases and that's a new virus like COVID-19. Those are becoming more and

more common. We have more exposure to wildlife as we encroach into wild areas