The importance of animals in the transmission of disease plays a much larger part than people realize. Not only does it explain an evolutionary, mutational leap in diseases, but it can help us understand how disease transmission works and potentially extinguish it. One example is malaria. The mosquito is the insect that spreads the disease. Through understanding this transmission, scientists have been able to develop infertile male mosquitos, which will mate with the females and drive the rate of malaria infection down.

One other example is HIV. Knowing that the chimpanzee was the original host for HIV helps scientists understand the evolutionary progress of diseases, especially viruses, which are far more complicated and hard to get rid of than a bacteria. This jump from ape to man may help us understand other diseases that function the same way.

HR: Googled “zoonotic”