Zoonosis

A zoonosis (also spelled zoönosis) is an infectious disease that is transmitted between species (sometimes by a vector) from animals other than humans to humans or from humans to other animals (the latter is sometimes called reverse zoonosis or anthroponosis). In direct zoonosis the agent needs only one host for completion of its life cycle, without a significant change during transmission. In a systematic review of 1,415 pathogens known to infect humans, 61% were zoonotic.