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The coronavirus spreading in China and the SARS outbreak of 2003 have two things in common: Both are from the coronavirus family, and both likely started in wet markets.

At such markets, outdoor stalls are squeezed together to form narrow lanes, where locals and visitors shop for cuts of meat and ripe produce. A stall selling hundreds of caged chickens may abut a butcher counter, where meat is chopped as nearby dogs watch hungrily. Some vendors hock skinned hares, while seafood stalls display glistening fish and shrimp.

Wet markets put people and live and dead animals — dogs, chickens, pigs, snakes, civets, and more — in constant close contact. That makes it easy for a virus to jump from animal to human.

On January 22, authorities in Wuhan, China — where the current outbreak started — banned the trade of live animals at wet markets. The specific market where the outbreak might have begun, the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, was shuttered on January 1. The coronavirus that emerged there has so far killed at least 360 people and infected more than 17,400. (For the latest case total, death toll, and travel information, see Business Insider’s live updates here.)

“Poorly regulated, live-animal markets mixed with illegal wildlife trade offer a unique opportunity for viruses to spillover from wildlife hosts into the human population,” the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement.

Coronaviruses are zoonotic diseases, meaning they spread to people from animals. In the case of SARS, and likely this Wuhan coronavirus outbreak as well, bats were the original hosts. The bats then infected other animals, which transmitted the virus to humans.

Here’s what Chinese wet markets look like.

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan closed on January 1 after it was found to be the most likely starting point for the outbreak of this coronavirus, called 2019-nCov.

Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, on January 12, 2020. NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images

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A 61-year-old man was the first person to die from the virus. According to Bloomberg, he was a regular shopper at the Huanan wet market, which sold more than seafood.

Wet markets like Huanan are common in China. They’re called wet markets because vendors often slaughter animals in front of customers.

“That means there’s a lot of skinning of dead animals in front of shoppers and, as a result, aerosolizing of all sorts of things,” Emily Langdon, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago Medicine, wrote in an article.