The Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra may be the original sources of the newly discovered coronavirus, according to an article on the CNN website
The coronavirus is in the same family of viruses as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which have killed hundreds of people in the past 17 years.
Both SARS and MERS are classified as zoonotic viral diseases, meaning the first patients who were infected acquired these viruses directly from animals.
When researchers performed detailed bioinformatics analysis of the sequence of 2019-nCoV, it suggests that this coronavirus might come from snakes.