"Here, we investigate fundamental virological traits that influence cross-species transmissibility and zoonotic propensity by interrogating a database of over 12,000 mammalian virus–host associations. Our analysis reveals that enveloped viruses tend to infect more host species and are more likely to be zoonotic than nonenveloped viruses, while other viral traits such as genome composition, structure, size, or the viral replication compartment play a less obvious role."