The Hot Zone
What factors make Kitum Cave “a nice place for a virus to jump species”? Give evidence to support each of your factors.
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Hannah R #544605
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jill d #170087
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jill d #170087
From the text:
Kitum Cave is Mount Elgon’s equivalent of the Times Square subway station. It is an underground traffic zone, a biological mixing point where different species of animals and insects cross one another’s paths in an enclosed air space. A nice place for a virus to jump species.
There was no sign of running water in this cave, no streambed, no stalactites. It was an enormous, bone-dry hole in the side of Mount Elgon. Viruses like dry air and dust and darkness, and most of them don’t survive long when exposed to moisture and sunlight. Thus a dry cave is a good place for a virus to be preserved, for it to lie inactive in dung or in drying urine, or even, perhaps, for it to drift in cool, lightless, nearly motionless air.
Source(s)
Preston, Richard. The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus (p. 396). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
