Koalas were among the huge range of exotic animals sold at a food market where the deadly coronavirus is believed to have broken out.

Disease experts are still trying to confirm the origin of the virus outbreak that is threatening to become a global pandemic.

The epicentre of the infection has been narrowed down to something being sold in the Wuhan food market and the entire city of 11 million people is currently on lockdown .

It’s thought that the virus began as an infection in an animal species before making the leap to humans.

Snakes have been suggested as one source and some experts have questioned whether bats could be to blame but with the huge range of animals being sold for human consumption in the sprawling market there are dozens if not hundreds of species under suspicion.

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Now it has emerged that koalas were on offer in the market. They are described as "tree bears" on a price list obtained by the South China Morning Post. The menu shows a price of 70 RMB (about £7.69) for a koala.

The adorably fluffy marsupials were being sold for their meat in the days running up to the outbreak, despite the fact that their numbers were already declining before the devastating wildfires broke out across Australia.

The fires are thought to have killed at least 25,000 of the placid, slow-moving "bears".

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Gao Fu, director of the Chinese centre for disease control and prevention, explained in a report : "We already know that the disease originated from a market which conducted illegal transaction of wild animals.

"This might be the cause, so the disease could be on an animal, and then passed on from this animal to a human.”

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Coronavirus outbreak

Other animals offered for sale at the food market included foxes, crocodiles, wolf puppies, scorpions, snakes and peacocks.

The World Health Organisation reported that The Huanan Seafood Market was closed on January 1 for environmental sanitation and disinfection.

Gao warned that the virus is still “adapting and mutating” making the work of finding a vaccine harder.

• World Health Organisation
• Animals
• China
• Coronavirus

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