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by Brad Plumer on July 31, 2014, 5:26 p.m. ET
@bradplumer [email protected]

   
One of the big questions surrounding the current deadly Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone is how the disease spread to humans in the first place.

In all likelihood, the virus was originally circulating among bats or possibly gorillas in the forests of western Africa. Some experts believe that the disease may have spread to humans via "bushmeat" — someone butchering an infected bat for food, say, and coming in contact with its blood.

The disease then traveled from humans to humans. One possible conduit is through certain funeral rites in which dead bodies are washed by hand, notes John Snow, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. (The first recorded case in the current outbreak was a doctor in the rural town of Gueckedou in Guinea — the virus then spread to those at his funeral.)

That's one plausible scenario, at least. But it's worth noting that there are all sorts of other complex factors at play here that make these scenarios even more likely to occur in the first place. In western Africa, for instance, deforestation is putting humans in closer contact with bats, who may be carrying the disease. So has conflict in Sierra Leone.

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