> What makes pangolins more dangerous than pigs or ducks which have been a similar source of human diseases?
It's less the species than the wet markets.
Putting lots of species in close proximity, particularly ones that don't naturally co-exist, facilitates host jumping. Its only comparison is with medieval European cities, where people, sewage and livestock had constant and close proximity to one another.
Which is what I expected. There is truth to diseases like this coming from dangerous food practices, but that often gets coated in a layer of ethnocentrism that pins it on a specific animal or the need to hunt wildlife instead of relying on a factory farming infrastructure (which is also increasing the potential for global pandemic by overusing antibiotics).
"Close proximity" does it a disservice when there are cages of animals stacked on top of one another such that the animals in the bottom cages may be covered in the feces of those above them.
It's less the species than the wet markets.
Putting lots of species in close proximity, particularly ones that don't naturally co-exist, facilitates host jumping. Its only comparison is with medieval European cities, where people, sewage and livestock had constant and close proximity to one another.