Page 5 - Vampire Bat News Today

For many of us, when we think of bats, we think of one thing. rabies. the threat of that virus is often misunderstood. >> its not very common for americans to get rabies. >> dylan george is a former white house adviser for biological threat defense. >> in any given year theres anywhere from zero to one to two people might get infected from rabies in bats or potentially from foxes or raccoons or skunks. >> rabies has actually been around for 2,000 years. for most of that time, if you got it, it w...

Amazon, could have 100 species of bat. >> the smallest bat in the world, its this tiny thing in thailand that weighs less than a penny. the biggest bat in the world has more than a six-foot wing span. theres a bat that lives in the cloud forests of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. this thing has a tongue that is 1 1/2 times the length of its body. if you stick your arm straight out in front of you and imagine your tongue could touch your fingers, its three times that long, so i...

What species are in there. then what we do is set up nets outside and catch bats as they fly out in the evening and go back in the morning. >> we do everything we can to ensure the safety and well-being of the animals and we have a basic set of samples we collect. oral swabs, fecal pellets, blood. and we take measurements. >> over the course of eight months, they sampled caves all over southern china and then they took all these samples back to the lab. >> it really took the better part of eight...

>> when the wing is around the face like that, theyre using their wings as built-in blanket. >> hes part of a larger movement thats been taking place for the last three decades in the united states, teaching people why these creatures should be protected, not feared. >> were all here for one purpose and for one target and one direction, and thats to help these animals and to help people understand why these animals need our assistance. theyre so much like us. they are different looking, differen...

>> the same adaptation, also, favor them to carry virus. >> it doesnt appear that they get sick, or very sick, when they are carrying viruses that can be deadly in other people and animals. >> so, could studying bat immunology help us, humans, create possible treatments to fight this current and future pandemics? what do you think is the greatest challenge in terms of finding a treatment or cure for these viruses? >> well, to my mind, the greatest challenge is the number of unknown viruses that ...

For bats, they have coronaviruses that theyve adapted to, and theyre totally fine. but you put them in a wet market situation, they get sick, they get stressed. they succumb, just like if youve worked too hard and you suddenly come down with that flu, the bats get overworked. >> sometimes with zoonotic spillover, there can also be an intermediary animal. so bats transmit to another species, then that species transmits to humans. in the case of covid-19, as of now, no one can say for sure how it ...

Environment, were creating opportunity for a bat virus to get into people. ♪ ♪ be it discovering talent in different continents... and entirely different sports, or discovering a smoother whisky by double-aging, sometimes, its just better to stay curious. dewars the only thing a disaster cant destroy is hope.

Sound from their nose or mouth and then listen for the echo that bounces back to create a mind map of their surroundings. their often oversize ears also help. some species of bats have such sensitive hearing, they can detect the sound of an insect landing on a leaf. are bats social animals? >> it depends on the species. some bats spend their whole lives pretty much alone. other bats will mate for life. you have some species where theres a male and a harem of females, where he gets to mate with a...

>> some migrate thousands of miles, and hence the viruses that they carry traffic along those migratory routes. >> and though some of the pathogens bats play host to can make them sick, like rabies, they also have the unique ability to host and withstand some viruses without getting sick. >> understanding how bats co-exist with diseases is very critical. bats have a very unique relationship with pathogens generally. they have a unique biology, and it allows them to coexist with pathogens in diff...

Among bat researchers, there is a concern that humans will give covid-19 to bats. >> emerging infectious diseases can go both ways. right? we do know that some other animals can get covid-19. for instance, the tigers at the bronx zoo. >> for now, most research involving handling of bats across the u.s. has been put on hold, because currently humans are potentially the bigger threat to bats. want to sell the best burger in every zip code?