> >I would enjoy seeing any reference to 30% of beef virus being from a snake.  For some reason I suspect I will never witness.

I thought we were going to forgo snark. Anyway, he said 30% of DNA, not virus. This is not news, really:

> We have shown previously by Southern blot analysis that Bov-B long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) are present in different Viperidae snake species.  In this paper, the evolutionary origin of Bov-B LINEs is shown unequivocally to be in Squamata. The horizontal transfer of Bov-B LINEs from Squamata to the ancestor of Ruminantia is evident from the genetic distances and discontinuous phylogenetic distribution. The ancestor of Colubroidea snakes is a possible donor of Bov-B LINEs to Ruminantia.  The phylogenetic relationships of Bov-B LINEs from the various Squamata species agrees with that of the species phylogeny, suggesting that Bov-B LINEs have been maintained stably by vertical transmission since the origin of Squamata in the Mesozoic era.

Kordis, D., & Gubensek, F. (1998). Unusual horizontal transfer of a long interspersed nuclear element between distant vertebrate classes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95(18), 10704-10709.

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