It’s not news to anyone that viruses can spread from one species to another. In fact, some of the most deadly and horrific diseases, such as HIV and Ebola, were passed to humans by other mammals. Viruses usually only spread within pools of species that share a common biological make-up—humans and apes for example—and don’t normally spread across completely different species, but then the ACTV-1 virus came along and ruined everyone’s day.

While doing a separate study on cognitive function, researchers from John Hopkins University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found DNA from a chlorovirus, which is plant virus that typically affects algae, on throat swabs taken from healthy human test subjects, according to Phys.Org.

The finding of the new algae virus, ACTV-1, living inside a human throat marks the first documented case of a plant virus jumping such a wide species gap.

Since the researchers were already testing cognitive functions when they found ACTV-1 in the throats of some test subjects, they were able to see if the subjects with ACTV-1 performed better or worse cognitively. Upon completion of the tests, the team found that participants with ACTV-1 performed measurably worse than those who tested negative, according to Phys.Org. The virus affected participants vision the most causing a 10 percent decrease in how quickly they could perceive images.

ACTV-1 can be found in algae pools in fresh water ponds. Even though the virus sounds scary, researchers are still trying to figure out how the virus spread and believe it could have something to do with traits found in certain individuals, meaning that the virus cannot spread to everyone. More research will be needed to examine the long-term effects of ACTV-1.

(h/t Phys.Org)