While SARSr-CoVs are not widespread in farmed palm civets [100] and wild palm civets [219], SARSr-CoVs collected from bat anal/fecal swabs show high genetic diversity and are widespread in wild Chinese horseshoe bats in the genus Rhinolophus (Rhinolophus sinicus [95], R. pussilus (seropositive in blood specimens), R. pearsoni, R. macrotis and R. ferrumequinum [220]). Based on these observations, bats were believed to be the natural reservoir of SARS-CoVs. However, phylogenetic relationships suggested that none of the virus isolates from wild bats are direct ancestral viruses of SARS-CoV [130]. It is most likely that SARS-CoV evolved through recombination of bat SARSr-CoVs [128,129,130].