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Originally Posted by pgardn
It is indeed, you are not out of date. It is also clear that close human contact on a continual basis with pigs and birds has led to some viruses that infect humans and the aforementioned animals. The swine flu and now these crazy bird viruses are thought to occur because of the dirty close exposure occuring on a massive level in Asia. Actually, its pretty clear this is what has happened. So the relatives dont have to be all that close, just vertebrates.
If you had a giant toad farm, in which you were very intimately associated with the beasts and so were all of your 100's of employees (Your are the big fish in Toad farming). And hundreds of thousands of people also had toad farms, toads being big business dont ya know, we could have an amphibian virus that would cross genetic lines because we have a lot in common with vertebrates in general. So a little contact with close relatives, or massive contact with more distance relatives seems to be the trick.
If you do decide to raise jellyfish instead of toads, I think we are safe, as jellyfish are very distantly related. And if you find a way to have close contact with jellyfish on a continual basis, you must be related to that fella that put himself in that round aquarium for a week or so. As a final example, I have yet to hear of cases of Pecan farmers contracting a Pecan tree viruses using the same reasoning. Even if the farmers scrambled around in the trees like spider monkeys. Which brings us full turn. And I thank you.
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One of the actors here at the zoo some years back was a freelance veterinarian, and he always said vertebrates were all pretty similar, and if within the same class, like mammals, we're all REALLY similar. He was great at on-the-spot diagnoses for the actors' ailments! And usually right.
The Spanish Influenza was a pig virus that hopped to humans. My great-great grandfather died of it.