What is a raccoon dog and why is it being linked to COVID-19’s origin? – National | 24CA News
Last week, a group of worldwide researchers shared with the world a discovery presumably linking the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic to a breed of animal in a Wuhan, China moist market: particularly, a raccoon canine.
French virologist Florence Débarre of the French National Centre for Scientific Research noticed the knowledge by likelihood whereas scouring a worldwide database, and shared it with a gaggle of scientists primarily based exterior of China wanting into the origins of the coronavirus.
The genetic sequences had been uploaded to the world’s largest public virus database in late January, however have since been eliminated.
According to the World Health Organization, genetic sequencing information confirmed that among the samples taken on the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which had been identified to be constructive for the coronavirus, additionally contained genetic materials from raccoon canines, indicating the animals could have been contaminated by the virus, in keeping with the scientists.
“There’s a good chance that the animals that deposited that DNA also deposited the virus,” stated Stephen Goldstein, a virologist on the University of Utah who was concerned in analyzing the information. “If you were to go and do environmental sampling in the aftermath of a zoonotic spillover event, this is basically exactly what you would expect to find.”
And whereas the connection indicators good issues when it comes to getting nearer to COVID-19’s origins, lots of people had been shocked by the title of the animal. So what, precisely, is a raccoon canine?
Raccoon canines: What you must know
Physically, raccoon canines look just about how their title implies — they resemble a small-to-medium dimension canine with a raccoon head. They’re small, fluffy and plenty of have stout, rotund our bodies.
A photograph of a raccoon canine, taken in Germany.
Erich Thielscher / McPhoto/ullstein bild by way of Getty Images
Despite their title, nonetheless, raccoon canines (Nyctereutes procyonoides) are most intently associated to foxes. The species now linked to the COVID-19 outbreak is named the frequent raccoon canine, which is completely different from its relative, the Japanese raccoon canine.
Raccoon canines of each species originate in East Asia and have a median weight of 16 kilos, making them of little hazard to people. Fun info: they’re monogamous, have curved claws and go right into a state of sunshine hibernation within the winter.
Read extra:
Buster Murdaugh denies involvement in loss of life of juvenile discovered close to household house
They are additionally inclined to SARS-CoV-2, and a few have beforehand examined constructive for the coronavirus. They have additionally been discovered to have the ability to go on the illness. So whereas there’s nonetheless no strong proof that they’re accountable for the virus outbreak within the Wuhan market, it does show that the market was, certainly, promoting animals that may carry the virus.
Raccoon canines are omnivores and like to stay in forests or areas of dense vegetation or that border water. And whereas they beforehand made their house in elements of China, Korea and Japan, breeding from the fur farming trade resulted in 1000’s being launched to the Soviet Union within the Twenties.
Today, they’re thought-about a widespread invasive species in western and northern Europe, and a European Union report on invasive species “of concern” declared it “one of the most successful alien carnivores in Europe.”
And whereas many North Americans may not have the ability to conjure up a real-life picture of a raccoon canine from the highest of their heads, likelihood is they’ve come throughout an outline of 1 stemming from Japanese folklore. Known as “tanuki” in Japanese, in legendary settings raccoon canines are shape-shifters that may convey good monetary luck.
In Japanese animation, cartoons and likenesses, they’re usually drawn with massive scrotums that they’ll manipulate into helpful objects like fishing nets, umbrellas and parachutes.
Stone statues depicting ‘tanuki’ or raccoon canines stand on the grounds of Yashima-ji, Temple 84 of the Shikoku 88 Buddhist temple pilgrimage, on Nov. 11, 2019 close to the city of Takamatsu in Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, Japan.
David Madison / Getty Images
Tatebayashi Gunma Morinji Temple is legendary for the well-known tanuki raccoon canine, Bunbuku Chagama.
John S. Lander / Lightrocket by way of Getty Images
Raccoon canines and their connection to viruses
As talked about earlier, raccoon canines have lengthy been raised, bred and hunted for his or her fur, which is probably going why they’d have been offered on the Wuhan market.
As reported by Slate, tens of millions are killed in China yearly and a big portion of their pelts are purchased by the U.S. In order to provide the worldwide marketplace for raccoon canine fur, the animals are sometimes raised in crowded services from small cages, which is a recipe for the unfold of illness.
A 2004 report from The Lancet says that raccoon canines and associated animals offered for meals at a moist market in China in 2003 had been discovered to hold a virus similar to the SARS virus that was circulating in people on the time. Officials on the time ordered the slaughter of 10,000 animals set to be offered at such markets, after alarms of one other outbreak had been sounded when a person examined constructive for a novel pressure of the SARS virus.
A examine carried out final yr discovered that samples taken from 2,000 animals of 18 completely different species throughout China discovered that animals identified to be eaten by people, together with raccoon canines, carried 102 completely different viruses from 13 viral households.
Specifically, the examine discovered that raccoon canines carried 4 canine coronaviruses that had been genetically just like these present in people. They additionally carried enteric viruses, or viruses which might be transmitted when contaminated fecal matter enters the mouth or nostril.
A raccoon canine is pictured foraging in a forest and exhibiting camouflage colors.
Universal Images Group by way of Getty Images
Are we nearer to figuring out COVID-19’s origins?
The reply is sure… and no.
Late final week the World Health Organization (WHO) known as on China to launch the information that was taken down. Researchers say having the information will enable them to additional analyze what was occurring within the Huanan market in 2020.
“The big issue right now is that this data exists and that it is not readily available to the international community,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, instructed CNBC.
“This is first and foremost absolutely critical, not to mention that it should have been made available years earlier, but that data needs to be made accessible to individuals who can access it, who can analyze it and who can discuss it with each other,” she stated of the significance of the molecular information, which was collected from swabs of the market’s flooring, partitions, cages and carts beginning in January 2020.
Van Kerkhove instructed the outlet that the small quantity of knowledge they’ve proper now doesn’t give a conclusive reply into the pandemic’s beginnings, “but it does provide more clues.”
“These data could have — and should have — been shared three years ago,” stated Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director normal. The lacking proof now “needs to be shared with the international community immediately,” he instructed the New York Times.
And whereas raccoon canines now fall inside the realm of risk of being among the many first to be contaminated with SARS-CoV-2, there nonetheless stay many competing theories as to the virus’s origins — together with theories that the virus originated in a Chinese government-controlled lab – which researchers proceed to research.
Until China reuploads its information, Van Kerkhove instructed CNBC, the WHO “won’t be able to remove different hypotheses.”
University of Saskatchewan virologist Angela Rasmussen, who was concerned with the information evaluation, stated it’s necessary to emphasize that the information doesn’t definitively show a raccoon canine was contaminated with the coronavirus.
“We just have evidence that the animals were in the same part of the market where we know there was virus,” she stated.
The proof does make it “more likely that an animal contributed the viral sequences that were in there,” Rasmussen added.
Arturo Casadevall, an immunologist on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, instructed the New York Times the information provides to the proof of a pure spillover occasion.
“I would say it strengthens the zoonotic idea, that is, the idea that it came from an animal at the market,” he stated.
After a weeks-long go to to China to check the pandemic’s origins, WHO launched a report in 2021 concluding that COVID-19 most likely jumped into people from animals, dismissing the potential for a lab origin as “extremely unlikely.”
But the UN well being company backtracked the next yr, saying “key pieces of data” had been nonetheless lacking.
In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Energy had assessed “with low confidence” that the virus had leaked from a lab. But others within the U.S. intelligence group disagree, believing it extra possible it first got here from animals.
Experts say the true origin of the pandemic will not be identified for a few years — if ever.
— With information from The Associated Press
