The University of Sydney in Australia has funded a study meant to gather spiders, insects and worms from the inside of people’s homes as well as people yards in order to determine if any bugs can carry viruses. The researchers were amazed to find 1,500 different viruses have been found in the bugs that live in and around people’s homes
Researchers also found the common flu on the bugs that they had collected for analysis, and many researchers are now certain that the insects themselves are the primary hosts for the variety of different viruses that have been detected in house and garden bugs. However, the viral insects are not much of a problem for humans.
Unlike mosquitoes, most insects cannot transfer viral pathogens onto humans. Researchers are not using the infected insects in the laboratory in order to learn more about the nature of Lyme disease. It is likely that these viral bugs will increase human knowledge about how certain diseases function.
Why don’t the insects die from the various viruses that plague common insects?
