Scientists look to bats for origin of latest outbreak
NEW YORK: If previous outbreaks of coronavirus are any indication, the Wuhan strain that is now spreading may eventually be traced back to bats.
Dr Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, who has been working in China for 15 years studying diseases that jump from animals to people, said, “We don’t know the source yet, but there’s pretty strong evidence that this is a bat origin coronavirus.”
He said, “It’s probably going to be the Chinese horseshoe bat”, a common species that weighs up to 28 grammes.
If he’s right, this strain will join many other viruses that bats carry.
Sars and Mers epidemics were caused by bat coronaviruses, as was a highly destructive viral epidemic in pigs.
One bat can host many different viruses without getting sick.
They are the natural reservoir for the Marburg virus, and Nipah and Hendra viruses, which have caused human disease and outbreaks in Africa, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Australia.
They are thought to be the natural reservoir for the Ebola virus.
They also carry the rabies virus, but in that case the bats are affected by the disease.
Their tolerance of viruses, which surpasses that of other mammals, is one of their many distinctive qualities.
They are the only flying mammals, they devour disease-carrying insects by the tonne, and they are essential in the pollination of many fruits, like bananas, avocados and mangoes. They are also an incredibly diverse group, making up about a quarter of all mammalian species.
But their ability to coexist with viruses that can spill over to other animals, in particular humans, can have devastating consequences when we eat them, trade them in livestock markets and invade their territory.
Learning how they carry and survive so many viruses has been a deep question for science, and new research suggests that the answer may be how the bats’ evolutionary adaptations to flight changed their immune systems.