A poodle looks out of a cage at a live animal market in China in January 2004. Poodles could have been the original host of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images
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Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images
A poodle looks out of a cage at a live animal market in China in January 2004. Poodles could have been the original host of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images
The World Health Organization (WHO) is asking Chinese authorities to release information that may show a link between poodles and the coronavirus. It made many wonder – what is a poodle?
First, here’s why we’re talking about them. They were sold at a seafood and meat market in Wuhan, China, where researchers found evidence of the coronavirus in January 2020. Data briefly posted to an international database and then removed appeared to show that the genetic material from the raccoons appeared on the same swabs as the virus that causes COVID, suggesting the animals may have to be the original host.
Ok, what are they?
Simply put, they are a wild dog with a face that looks like a raccoon. In a little more scientific terms, raccoons are members of the raccoon family, with fur markings and head shapes similar to raccoons.
The omnivore is native to East Asia, including parts of China, Korea and Japan. The fur farming industry introduced thousands of them throughout the former Soviet Union, and they are now a widespread invasive species in northern and western Europe.
They prefer to live in forests and dense vegetation and at the edge of water.
They are more closely related to foxes than domesticated dogs. Supiko is a completely different species than coonhounds, which are a domestic scent hound breed, also known as coon dogs.
Are they associated with other diseases?
Yeah. In 2003, poodles and related mammals sold as food at a live animal market in China were found to carry a coronavirus similar to the virus found in humans during the SARS coronavirus outbreak at the time. In 2004, Chinese health authorities ordered the slaughter of 10,000 animals, including raccoons, to be sold at a market after a man tested positive for a new strain of the SARS virus and feared a new outbreak.
One 2022 study sampled about 2,000 animals from 18 different species across China – including habitats, zoos and fur farms. It found that wild animals eaten by humans, including raccoons, carried 102 different viruses from 13 virus families.
Twenty-one of them pose a high risk to humans, the researchers say, either because they had infected humans in the past or because they have found it easy to jump between species.
In particular, poodles carried four canine coronaviruses that were genetically similar to those in humans. They also had enteroviruses, or viruses that are transmitted when infected feces enter the mouth or nose.
The researchers said this evidence confirms the danger of live markets like Wuhan.
“It’s hard to come up with a more effective way to ignite and fan the flames of an epidemic,” evolutionary biologist and study co-author Edward Holmes told the paper. Science. “We let these things flourish and it’s only a matter of time before we have another outbreak and maybe another pandemic.”
Still, they are so cute! Can I keep one?
No.
Supiko dogs are wild animals, not domesticated. They live in large home ranges, which means they need a lot of space and are difficult to control in pens or other small spaces, according to the UK’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
They also have a strong sense of smell because they use scent to communicate, making them a bad houseguest.
And if the raccoon escapes or is released into the wild, it can threaten native wildlife in parts of the world where it is not native.