The coronavirus pandemic once again sheds light on the emergence and the increasing spread of zoonosis diseases around the world. Zoonosis diseases are the infections exchanged between humans and animals. Most of the time scientists and researchers only concentrate on the infections from animals to humans as such during this pandemic. But a few of them go through the trouble of studying the phenomenon of disease transmission from humans to animals known as reverse zoonosis or anthropozoonosis.
Zoonosis or Reverse zoonosis is a result of the proximity between wildlife and humans in recent decades. Due to deforestation, the consumption of animals as food and livestock and pets, animals have lost their original habitats and are dwelling among us humans thereby disrupting the whole ecosystem. Like our world is thrown off-balance due to a zoonosis disease entering our lives, likewise, the wildlife is also heavily disturbed when humans pass on diseases to animals through pathogens and bacteria. The hepatitis A virus, for example, is known to cause hepatitis in non-human primates. The herpes viruses will infect marmosets and tamarins. Salmonella bacteria also infects farm animals and pets, and dogs are known to be infected with the mumps virus. Spillover of infectious disease between animals and humans is a two-way street-but few scientists concentrate on the human-to-animal transmission of disease, a phenomenon called reverse zoonosis or anthropozoonosis. Recently, it has been found that reverse zoonosis is a possibility in the transmission of the novel coronavirus from humans to cats, both wild and domestic.
Since the past two decades explorers, whalers, scientists, and lately tourists have crossed the lines of human regions and have entered the furthest regions of the wildlife. Though globally relevant, reverse zoonosis is of particular interest to Indian scientists, given the proximity of humans and wildlife across the diverse landscapes of India. In India, 17 percent of the world’s livestock is home. The network of protected areas covers around 5 percent of the land area, and human communities also occupy these regions’ buffer zones. Together these three facts mean that humans, livestock, and wildlife always communicate with one another. Other types of spillover events can be found in the pet trade and animal husbandry, both of which have only become more common.
