Ah, swine flu. I picked that up at PAX prime, have to say that was the worse cold I can remember having.Yep, you can get the flu from a bird, reptile and other mammals. The H1N1 pandemic that started in 1918 came from infected pigs. Everyone thinks that's all it did, but the H1N1 virus reached epidemic status in 1977 in the Soviet Union, and there was a fortunately short pandemic in 2009. They find local infections more often. What that means is that it's still with us somewhere.