What is the term for a disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans?

The term for a disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans is a zoonotic disease. This type of disease highlights the direct connection between human and animal health, illustrating how pathogens can spill over from animals to humans, leading to infections. Zoonotic diseases are important to understand in veterinary medicine because they can have significant public health implications.

In contrast, infectious diseases are not limited to those transmitted from animals; they can arise from various sources, including other humans or environmental factors. Contagious diseases are a subset of infectious diseases that are easily transmitted from one individual to another but do not specifically denote transmission from animals to humans. Endemic diseases refer to diseases that are consistently present within a certain geographical area but do not necessarily involve animal transmission. Hence, zoonotic diseases uniquely refer to the animal-human transmission dynamic, making it the correct terminology in this context.