Mpox is a disease caused by the highly infectious monkeypox virus. It’s quite easily passed on from one person to another. But it originally came from infected animals.
The virus was discovered in 1958 when two outbreaks of pox-like infection were seen in monkeys shipped from Singapore to Denmark for research. Studies since then, however, has shown that monkeys are not the natural host (reservoir) of the virus. This idea was dropped in the 1970s when cases in humans were seen in west and central Africa. In 1979 a large-scale survey of 43 species of animals revealed further evidence of exposure to the virus.
