As we all know, if there's a natural origin for the COVID virus there needs to be an intermediate host. That is, the virus needs to have passed from a bat, where it originated, to some other animal, where it finished evolving into a form deadly to human beings. Today Nature published a longish piece suggesting we've probably found the intermediate host:
Today, mounting evidence from more than a dozen studies point to a person, or people, catching the virus from a wild animal.... And the animal at the top of the list is the raccoon dog.
A raccoon dog roaming around China.
....One of the reasons raccoon dogs were suggested as a prime candidate early on is because they were probably involved in passing another, related, virus to people. In 2003, researchers isolated close matches of the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in several civets and a raccoon dog at a live-animal market in Guangdong, China.
This finding prompted researchers in Germany to investigate these animals’ susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. They found that raccoon dogs can be infected by SARS-CoV-2, and — despite not getting that sick themselves — can pass on the infection to other animals.
....Further evidence to support the raccoon-dog theory came in 2023. Chinese researchers published genomic data of swabs taken at the Huanan market in January 2020, after it was shut down, including of stalls, rubbish bins and sewage. Studies found mitochondrial DNA of raccoon dogs in several swabs, including those that also tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
....Most researchers agree that SARS-CoV-2 probably originated in Rhinolophus bats living in Yunnan, southern China.... That’s why it is important to consider the geographic ranges of suspect intermediate animals to see whether they overlap with those bats.... Among the animals at the Huanan market, the ranges of wild raccoon dogs...overlap with that of the bats. Fitting with this hypothesis, the mitochondrial DNA from raccoon dogs at the Huanan market did not match those from farmed animals in northeastern China, and were instead closer to wild-caught animals in central and southern China.
This isn't a smoking gun, but it's strong evidence not just for the zoonotic origin of COVID, but for raccoon dogs specifically as the intermediate host. Adjust your priors accordingly.
53 thoughts on “Are raccoon dogs key to the origin of the COVID virus?”
soapdish
*insert “sitting back with a bag of popcorn” gif here*
Crossing racoons with dogs is pretty diabolical, no?
jamesepowell
I thought it was Fauci
Jasper_in_Boston
Well, it was effectively both China and Fauci, given that the latter was well known to be on the payroll of the former.
cmayo
I'll file this under "Today in 'well that's obvious but Republicans are going to disbelieve it.'"
KawSunflower
Of course - just as soon as someone brings it to their attention - someone who reads Nature or jabberwocking. Might take a few days...
Srho
Republicans don't believe in raccoon dogs. Trump will sign an EO affirming the raccoon/dog binary.
cephalopod
I thought racoon dogs in wet markets were suspected very early on in the investigations. I'm pretty sure I was reading about it back in 2021 or so.
GrueBleen
'Suspected' is one thing, proved is quite another. Usually takes quite a few years to confirm that.
Joel
And there is no proof, nor will there ever be. Science doesn't deal in proof, it deals in the weight of evidence. As of now, the weight of evidence points to a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 in the Huanan wet market, and raccoon dogs top the list of suspected carriers, but neither the Nature article nor any of the people quoted assert "proof."
GrueBleen
Well of course, joel; there's no such thing as 'proof' so we now, and always, know absolutely nothing. Which is a viewpoint that Trump and Musk can support.
But then again, since there is no 'proof' of anything, is Terra flat or round ?
DButch
If Terra was flat cats would have pushed all our stuff off the edge by now.
Corrected some spelling...
GrueBleen
Que ?
memyselfandi
From the quoted nature article. "One of the reasons raccoon dogs were suggested as a prime candidate early "
iamr4man
A while back I saw some news stories about supposed faux fur clothing imported from China actually being Chinese raccoon dog (they aren’t actually related to raccoons and only get the name from their similar facial features). So people who wanted to purchase synthetic fur were actually getting real animal fur. In the story they showed a Chinese merchant killing a live raccoon dog by grabbing it by its hind legs and swinging its head into a concrete wall. Not something I ever forgot.
So perhaps Covid is revenge.
Art Eclectic
Every time I read things like that I start feeling like China should be wiped off the face of the earth.
SeanT
Not defending china, but spend a minute on a kill floor in an Iowa slaughter house...
dspcole
This is a pretty pathetic substitute for friday cat blogging….
GrueBleen
Sadly, very sadly, yes.
Justin
Chinese people doing things with animals? 😂 hilarious
I think it’s better to say lab source than animal fucking. Just saying…
cheweydelt
THAT’S what you took from this? Unless this is just a really bad joke, you are a crazy person.
Jasper_in_Boston
I take it you're new around here.
Joel
No, it's a resident troll. Please don't feed the troll.
Austin
Oh Christ. We’re back on this topic?
I fail to see why it matters to anybody not in virus epistemology (which is to say 99.9999% of us) where Covid came from. It’s like asking “where did the universe come from?” and then having thousands of years of war between adherents of different theories (Christians, Jews, Muslims, and all the subfactions within them, plus atheists and scientists and cult leaders and alien believers and…). It may be fascinating to discuss all the theories and certainly people can study them all to their heart’s desire. But “where did Covid come from?” seems clearly unknowable with 100% certainty and it’s also fuel for spreading more human conflict, just like religion has been.
jdubs
If it's fascinating to discuss and investigate, why throw a fit when someone is discussing it?
The conflict is inside you. Work on that.
Joel
I can see it doesn't matter to you. There's no such thing as "virus epistemology." The term you're looking for is "viral epidemiology," and lots of public health scientists and doctors are interested in that. You should be too.
"But “where did Covid come from?” seems clearly unknowable with 100% certainty . . ." Nothing is knowable with 100% certainty. Science doesn't deal in certainty, it deals in the weight of evidence. If you are looking for metaphysical certitude, you are talking about religion, not science.
memyselfandi
viral epidemiology is definitively the wrong name. Maybe just virology. or choronavirology.
memyselfandi
"I fail to see why it matters to anybody not in virus epistemology" Which is why the story is from nature magazine which is written explicitly for people with PhDs in fields like virus epistemology. "
D_Ohrk_E1
The part you excluded:
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.
Marion Koopmans, a virologist at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, agrees. “We have to be modest about our ability to predict which animal species” sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, she says.
The origin of the pandemic is still deeply politicized, and the lack of clear answers hasn’t helped. The virus probably originated in bats living in southern China. From there, many scientists think it infected an intermediate animal that passed it to people. The virus could also have passed directly from bats, although that is considered less likely given their habitat is far from Wuhan. And some still suggest that the virus could have escaped, or been deliberately released, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was known to be doing research on coronaviruses.
I guess this means you're feeling a lot better, though, with your willingness to get back into this topic and to post a half-dozen posts in 24 hours. I'm glad for that.
cheweydelt
Most people are prone to poor reasoning, so I don’t just get so many people that much for buying into the lab leak hypothesis. But the most likely reason has ALWAYS been zoonotic origin. It’s literally the cause of almost every pandemic or epidemic in human history.
Jasper_in_Boston
+1
Joel
+1
FrankM
You could have left out the "almost" in the last sentence.
Lounsbury
Well the poor reasoning is found here as well - as natural resevoir origin does not preclude lab origin - it is not an either or subject.
Not that I personally think lab is likely, rather the contrary, but the snide snobbery from Lefty side about this is generally as misplaced as the paranoid conspiracy mongering from the Right - both political tribes resolving this down to a political false either-or (and using poor and constrained / motivated reasoning)
ColBatGuano
Being snide because people believe the evidence is the same as believing delusions? Okay.
memyselfandi
I would point out that the article "Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding" that the nutjobs on the right claim said the virus didn't have a lab origin only said the virus was not human engineered. The only comment it made about lab leak was one sentence saying it was possible.
memyselfandi
Name a pandemic/epidemic or disease that did not have a zoonotic origin.
Anonymous At Work
Lab leak theory always had too many stretches and system failures. SARS, the OG one, was a mutation via wet markets that China was ordered to shut down by WHO. Guess what China didn't do? That it happened in Wuhan is kinda like how things in the US happen in LA or NYC often: sheer size. Wuhan is ~13-14 MILLION people. That's more people than 46 states (PA is on cusp at 13 million even).
Joel
And now bird flu is being incubated and mutated on American poultry farms and is showing up in cattle.
KJK
The MAGA Congressional Committee on this has already concluded that the source of Covid 19 was a Chinese lab leak, so why would I believe this BS about a so called Raccoon Dog? Is it a racoon or a dog? I have lots of racoons where I live and not one of them looked like they had Covid 19. None of them were coughing or seemed sick best I can tell. So this has to be a whole lot of left wing, socialist, DEI, women sports playing transgender BS coming from traitorous disloyal Democratic scientists.
Next they will tell me that vaccines don't cause autism and that road kill and raw milk are not safe to eat.
Lounsbury
analytically (although I think the wet-market origin is the most likely) there is quite a lot of fallacious either-or thinking going on this subject.
Zoological origin does not exclude lab origin as they are not mutually exclusive, from that Chinese lab work it is quite possible that there was virus work and the basis - since building a virus from zero is not within biological engineering means modification of existing .
Regrettably this now become Political Tribal question where it is either Black or White.
DButch
There is some work going on in various research organizations to try and create a "minimalist" life form. National Geographic publisted a story on that back in 2017.
Google "trying to build a simple organism by subtraction" and you'll get a smattering of hits. Seems to be a mix of trying to build from raw or start with a simple organism and remove bits.
And I hope they have good containment.
memyselfandi
Viruses aren't life forms according to present definition of life. Scientifically, we refer to viruses as active or inactive, not alive or dead.
memyselfandi
The lancelet article " "Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding" Febuary 2020 explicitly made this point, saying that the virus could have both evolved zoonoticly and then escaped from the Wuhan lab. That article only denied the virus was genetically engineered. It is just professional liars on the right who conflate engineered origin with lab leak.
jeffreycmcmahon
"Prior" is an adjective, not a noun.
memyselfandi
For mathematicians, it's also a noun.
memyselfandi
"As we all know, if there's a natural origin for the COVID virus there needs to be an intermediate host." That's patently false. One of the main results of the government funded research of ecohealth was that even SAR 1 didn't need an intermediary animal. "That is, the virus needs to have passed from a bat, where it originated, to some other animal, where it finished evolving into a form deadly to human beings." 100 false. We know that the entire genome of covid 19 virus was contained in two coronaviruses indigenous to the bats assumed to have originated covid 19. That is. one incident of virus genetic exchange could produce the pandemic. A natural origin of covid 19 was inevitable. This is why every one of the appropriate experts say a natural origin is most probable.
*insert “sitting back with a bag of popcorn” gif here*
Good to see you posting again.
+10
Sitting back for popcorn for what?
damn raccoons https://youtu.be/_qsDavz9vAI?si=cF5QvcK3HcYhTGwR
Raccoons know two things.
1. The world is garbage.
2. Garbage is delicious.
Racoon dogs are foxes, not racoons.
So China engineered the racoon dogs in a lab?
Crossing racoons with dogs is pretty diabolical, no?
I thought it was Fauci
Well, it was effectively both China and Fauci, given that the latter was well known to be on the payroll of the former.
I'll file this under "Today in 'well that's obvious but Republicans are going to disbelieve it.'"
Of course - just as soon as someone brings it to their attention - someone who reads Nature or jabberwocking. Might take a few days...
Republicans don't believe in raccoon dogs. Trump will sign an EO affirming the raccoon/dog binary.
I thought racoon dogs in wet markets were suspected very early on in the investigations. I'm pretty sure I was reading about it back in 2021 or so.
'Suspected' is one thing, proved is quite another. Usually takes quite a few years to confirm that.
And there is no proof, nor will there ever be. Science doesn't deal in proof, it deals in the weight of evidence. As of now, the weight of evidence points to a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 in the Huanan wet market, and raccoon dogs top the list of suspected carriers, but neither the Nature article nor any of the people quoted assert "proof."
Well of course, joel; there's no such thing as 'proof' so we now, and always, know absolutely nothing. Which is a viewpoint that Trump and Musk can support.
But then again, since there is no 'proof' of anything, is Terra flat or round ?
If Terra was flat cats would have pushed all our stuff off the edge by now.
Corrected some spelling...
Que ?
From the quoted nature article. "One of the reasons raccoon dogs were suggested as a prime candidate early "
A while back I saw some news stories about supposed faux fur clothing imported from China actually being Chinese raccoon dog (they aren’t actually related to raccoons and only get the name from their similar facial features). So people who wanted to purchase synthetic fur were actually getting real animal fur. In the story they showed a Chinese merchant killing a live raccoon dog by grabbing it by its hind legs and swinging its head into a concrete wall. Not something I ever forgot.
So perhaps Covid is revenge.
Every time I read things like that I start feeling like China should be wiped off the face of the earth.
Not defending china, but spend a minute on a kill floor in an Iowa slaughter house...
This is a pretty pathetic substitute for friday cat blogging….
Sadly, very sadly, yes.
Chinese people doing things with animals? 😂 hilarious
I think it’s better to say lab source than animal fucking. Just saying…
THAT’S what you took from this? Unless this is just a really bad joke, you are a crazy person.
I take it you're new around here.
No, it's a resident troll. Please don't feed the troll.
Oh Christ. We’re back on this topic?
I fail to see why it matters to anybody not in virus epistemology (which is to say 99.9999% of us) where Covid came from. It’s like asking “where did the universe come from?” and then having thousands of years of war between adherents of different theories (Christians, Jews, Muslims, and all the subfactions within them, plus atheists and scientists and cult leaders and alien believers and…). It may be fascinating to discuss all the theories and certainly people can study them all to their heart’s desire. But “where did Covid come from?” seems clearly unknowable with 100% certainty and it’s also fuel for spreading more human conflict, just like religion has been.
If it's fascinating to discuss and investigate, why throw a fit when someone is discussing it?
The conflict is inside you. Work on that.
I can see it doesn't matter to you. There's no such thing as "virus epistemology." The term you're looking for is "viral epidemiology," and lots of public health scientists and doctors are interested in that. You should be too.
"But “where did Covid come from?” seems clearly unknowable with 100% certainty . . ." Nothing is knowable with 100% certainty. Science doesn't deal in certainty, it deals in the weight of evidence. If you are looking for metaphysical certitude, you are talking about religion, not science.
viral epidemiology is definitively the wrong name. Maybe just virology. or choronavirology.
"I fail to see why it matters to anybody not in virus epistemology" Which is why the story is from nature magazine which is written explicitly for people with PhDs in fields like virus epistemology. "
The part you excluded:
I guess this means you're feeling a lot better, though, with your willingness to get back into this topic and to post a half-dozen posts in 24 hours. I'm glad for that.
Most people are prone to poor reasoning, so I don’t just get so many people that much for buying into the lab leak hypothesis. But the most likely reason has ALWAYS been zoonotic origin. It’s literally the cause of almost every pandemic or epidemic in human history.
+1
+1
You could have left out the "almost" in the last sentence.
Well the poor reasoning is found here as well - as natural resevoir origin does not preclude lab origin - it is not an either or subject.
Not that I personally think lab is likely, rather the contrary, but the snide snobbery from Lefty side about this is generally as misplaced as the paranoid conspiracy mongering from the Right - both political tribes resolving this down to a political false either-or (and using poor and constrained / motivated reasoning)
Being snide because people believe the evidence is the same as believing delusions? Okay.
I would point out that the article "Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding" that the nutjobs on the right claim said the virus didn't have a lab origin only said the virus was not human engineered. The only comment it made about lab leak was one sentence saying it was possible.
Name a pandemic/epidemic or disease that did not have a zoonotic origin.
Lab leak theory always had too many stretches and system failures. SARS, the OG one, was a mutation via wet markets that China was ordered to shut down by WHO. Guess what China didn't do? That it happened in Wuhan is kinda like how things in the US happen in LA or NYC often: sheer size. Wuhan is ~13-14 MILLION people. That's more people than 46 states (PA is on cusp at 13 million even).
And now bird flu is being incubated and mutated on American poultry farms and is showing up in cattle.
The MAGA Congressional Committee on this has already concluded that the source of Covid 19 was a Chinese lab leak, so why would I believe this BS about a so called Raccoon Dog? Is it a racoon or a dog? I have lots of racoons where I live and not one of them looked like they had Covid 19. None of them were coughing or seemed sick best I can tell. So this has to be a whole lot of left wing, socialist, DEI, women sports playing transgender BS coming from traitorous disloyal Democratic scientists.
Next they will tell me that vaccines don't cause autism and that road kill and raw milk are not safe to eat.
analytically (although I think the wet-market origin is the most likely) there is quite a lot of fallacious either-or thinking going on this subject.
Zoological origin does not exclude lab origin as they are not mutually exclusive, from that Chinese lab work it is quite possible that there was virus work and the basis - since building a virus from zero is not within biological engineering means modification of existing .
Regrettably this now become Political Tribal question where it is either Black or White.
There is some work going on in various research organizations to try and create a "minimalist" life form. National Geographic publisted a story on that back in 2017.
MIT also published something a little white ago.
Google "trying to build a simple organism by subtraction" and you'll get a smattering of hits. Seems to be a mix of trying to build from raw or start with a simple organism and remove bits.
And I hope they have good containment.
Viruses aren't life forms according to present definition of life. Scientifically, we refer to viruses as active or inactive, not alive or dead.
The lancelet article " "Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding" Febuary 2020 explicitly made this point, saying that the virus could have both evolved zoonoticly and then escaped from the Wuhan lab. That article only denied the virus was genetically engineered. It is just professional liars on the right who conflate engineered origin with lab leak.
"Prior" is an adjective, not a noun.
For mathematicians, it's also a noun.
"As we all know, if there's a natural origin for the COVID virus there needs to be an intermediate host." That's patently false. One of the main results of the government funded research of ecohealth was that even SAR 1 didn't need an intermediary animal. "That is, the virus needs to have passed from a bat, where it originated, to some other animal, where it finished evolving into a form deadly to human beings." 100 false. We know that the entire genome of covid 19 virus was contained in two coronaviruses indigenous to the bats assumed to have originated covid 19. That is. one incident of virus genetic exchange could produce the pandemic. A natural origin of covid 19 was inevitable. This is why every one of the appropriate experts say a natural origin is most probable.