Zoonosis may sound like an underrated U2 album, but actually it's the scientific term for the process by which a pathogen travels from animals to humans. It's also the subject of this incredible National Geographic story by one of my favorite writers now working, David Quammen. Quammen writes on science and nature, and his prose is flawless. Here's an example from this latest piece:
Viruses are the most problematic. They evolve quickly, they are unaffected by antibiotics, they can be elusive, they can be versatile, they can inflict extremely high rates of mortality, and they are fiendishly simple, at least relative to other living or quasi-living creatures. Hanta, SARS, monkeypox, rabies, Ebola, West Nile, Machupo, dengue, yellow fever, Junin, Nipah, Hendra, influenza, and HIV are all viruses. The full list is much longer. There is a thing known by the vivid name simian foamy virus (SFV) that infects monkeys and humans in Asia by way of venues (such as Buddhist and Hindu temples) where people and half-tame macaques come into close contact. Some of the people visiting those temples, feeding handouts to those macaques, exposing themselves to SFV, are international tourists. 'Viruses have no locomotion,' according to the eminent virologist Stephen S. Morse, 'yet many of them have traveled around the world.' They can't run, they can't walk, they can't swim, they can't crawl. They ride.
Quammen's conclusion--we're all in this together--is pretty banal, but that doesn't detract from a gripping, well-reported essay on what happens as societies modernize and expand into environments where humans have not traveled in a long, long time.