The Zoo: Covid-19 and Animals is streaming on Discovery Plus app. It will also air on Animal Planet at 8 pm today. (Photo: Animal Planet)
The Zoo: COVID-19 and Animals is a short documentary that explores how SARS-CoV-2 affects animals. Pet owners, animal lovers and zookeepers have been concerned whether the outbreak (that has claimed many lives worldwide) can be dangerous to our co-earthlings as well.
The concerns began when the four-year-old Malayan tigress, named Nadia, at New York’s Bronx Zoo was tested positive for COVID-19 after she started showing signs of illness on March 27. Four more tigers and three lions were later tested positive as well.
The documentary has Animal Planet’s big cat expert Dave Salmoni talking to experts, including Bronx Zoo’s chief veterinarian Paul Calle, a WHO scientist and so on. Salmoni tries to make the audience understand in layman terms how COVID-19 affects animals.
The coronavirus crisis itself has animal origins. It is an extremely contagious virus that is said to be a product of a Chinese wet market in the city of Wuhan. Experts believe it spread through a bat which infected a pangolin, which was then consumed by a human, instigating the outbreak. And thus, it spread from person to person until it was a pandemic of global proportions.
Until the Bronx Zoo incident came to light, it was not conclusively known whether the animals could also contract this disease. The documentary explains things easily and keeps the duration short.