What is the secret behind bats?

There are over 1200 species of bats, the special animal type which is the only mammal capable of true flight, across the globe, and they make up 20% of the animal kingdom. They live in caves, on trees, and roofs of our buildings. They are nocturnal animals and due to this reason, they have poor eyesight. However, they can catch echolocations via their skin and ears and this ability makes them more vulnerable to voice. There is a myth that all bats become active after the sunset. It is a completely mistaken view because they are some bat species that fly before sunset. In addition, they are the only mammals capable of truly flight. These animals can control the timing of their pregnancy. Mother bats take into account the availability of food and other ecological factors when choosing the time for giving birth. Moreover, bats benefit the ecology by eating lots of insects (half of their body weight in a day). Because of this reason they are called “the cleaners of the rainforest”. They are also indicators of air quality and ecological health. Last but not least, their saliva, which is an anticoagulant, is now a medication administrated to stroke victims. But, from another point of view, they are vermin, so they contain and carry many mortal and contagious diseases.

Which diseases are caused by bats?

Ebola (Nipah, Marburg, Hendra), Mers, Sars, rabies ­– all of these pasty pathogens are the contagious fatal illnesses caused and spread by bats throughout the last 50 years. Hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola are extremely fatal. They kill up to 90 percent of the infected people. In an Ebola-infected person’s body vomiting and diarrhea start. Moreover, it negatively affects the functioning of the liver and kidneys. The affected person turns paler during the first weeks. Ebola first detected in 1976 in Sudan and the pandemic reached its peak in 2014. the pandemic killed 1428 people. It spread with sweat, tears, mucus, saliva, vomit, and urine. There was no single case that spread with air. However, Sars and Covid 19 (coronavirus) are more contagious because they spread with air, breathe, contact, cough, sneeze. Fortunately, their death rate is almost 10 percent despite their fast-spreading feature. Sars was first identified at the end of February 2002 during an outbreak that emerged in China and spread to 24 other countries including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore. Most patients identified with SARS were previously healthy adults aged 25–70 years. A few suspected cases of SARS were reported among children under 15 years. After 2–7 days of incubation period fever reaches 38.0 degrees Celsius, fatigue, shortness of breath, diarrhea start. The number of infected people was 8089 and 774 of them died in 2 years from 2002 to 2004.

Covid 19 (SARS COV-2 or CORONAVIRUS) was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China and unfortunately even today the pandemic continues. The possible symptoms of a SARS-CoV-2 infection are high temperature, dry cough, loss of the sense of taste and smell. And all of these symptoms appear after 14 days incubation period. Till the end of June, almost 3.84 million out of 178 million infected people died. Some of the people who survived are living with side effects such as portal vein thrombosis, loss of sense, shortness of breath, etc.

All of these diseases originated in bats. But how can these viruses not affect them?

Bats are the only mammals that can fly, and flying is the answer to the above question. Bats generate more energy for flying and this feature helps them to have much better and stronger immune systems than humans. In fact, bats can continue their normal lives despite being infected with deadly viruses (each bat carries 2 diseases) because their cells can fight virus proteins and it prevents them from dying. During a virus attack, bats produce a molecule called interferon-alpha that signals to other cells to amplify their defense mechanisms. To overcome this defense, the virus begins to multiply rapidly and becomes highly infectious. Although bats can tolerate these viruses, for other mammals such as humans they can be deadly.

WHY BATS? How can they spread illnesses so rapidly?

Bats are living in colonies (all together) and due to this reason viruses can spread easily from one bat to a whole group. Furthermore, flying has a great impact on the speed of outspread. With the help of flying, they can visit more places than pedestrian animals. It can lead to the outbreak of diseases.

Are bats to blame?

It is obvious that these outbreaks are caused by humans and our animals creeping ever-farther into bats’ territory, especially in the tropics. For instance, in Australia people caused deforestation by cutting trees and built their living place in the bats’ terrain. And it led to human Hendra. Moreover, in Malaysia human Nipah spread because owners moved their commercial pig farms into the bat-inhabited forest. In that case, bats are not guilty more than humans.

Seljan Huseynzade

05.01.2022