That is correct and I am aware that a viruses tend to have a very high mutation rate and that it has certainly been one of many factors causing mutations in a host. But it remains to be seen whether each instance of said viruses would have caused the same effect. Most likely not, hence why I said it's still a mutation that caused the actual change.
But its probably personal preference whether one would call this a 'mutation' or a 'virus'.
As it is a little bit of both...
Correct again, which only goes to show that some mutations aren't exactly as randomly caused as people assume. The virus itself is the result of mutations as well.
(Also,
virii isn't a correct pluralization of
virus as it would be the plural of a Latin non-word
virius.
Viri isn't right either, as that's actual the plural of the latin word for man (-> men). Its one of those words that never had a plural in Latin (its a mass noun), so lets just stick to the English 'viruses'.
)
