The “Ship of the Desert” may be the carrier of the mysterious MERS virus that has infected at least 94 people in the Middle East and killed half of them.

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus has been spreading among dromedaries, according to a report in the British medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.  That’s big change in thinking, because the MERS virus belongs to a family of called coronaviruses, which are often found in bats.  Researchers were looking to the sky for the cause, instead of the sand dunes.

The researchers found evidence of MERS by taking blood samples retired racing camels and those used in the tourism industry in Oman and the Canary Islands, and while the animals didn’t have the virus, they did have the antibodies that the immune system produces to fight off the infection.

There have been no human cases of MERS-CoV infection in Oman, even though it is close to countries in the Arabian Peninsula where people have fallen sick and died.  But it is possible that infection of the camel population happened years ago.