Bats get a foul rap in all types of media — and it’s not completely unwarranted. Every time they hit the information, it’s usually paired with some lethal illness that they’ve one way or the other unleashed on people: from Ebola to Hendra virus to Nipah virus to numerous coronaviruses corresponding to SARS, MERS, and even Covid-19. Bats are simply actually good at internet hosting lethal illnesses, a lot in order that researchers from Brazil to Australia to China are looking out bat genomes for clues concerning the subsequent potential outbreak.
However there’s one other angle to contemplate.
Bats aren’t simply excellent at internet hosting lethal illnesses. They appear to tolerate them very nicely. In any case, we’re not discovering caves filled with lifeless bats that have been struck down by Ebola or a coronavirus. Precisely how they do that has been a thriller, however researchers suppose it may be as a result of they advanced with a singular means: They’re the solely mammals that may fly.
After we cease bats as merely reservoirs of lethal illness and begin to take a look at them because the organic marvels they’re, new doorways open — ones that might probably unlock new approaches to how we deal with illness in people.
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