updated 23 Apr 2020
Bats are not “special reservoirs” for zoonotic pathogens.
Implication that bats caused the pandemic is the latest threat to bats
Bats face many common threats, such as habitat loss, disturbance, and mortality caused by White-nose Syndrome and wind turbines. Yet one of the most insidious threats to bats worldwide, one that arguably causes the most bat mortality of all, is human persecution caused by fear.
The current global pandemic is amplifying already existing, unreasonable fear of bats. There are documented incidents in several countries of mass slaughter of bats, because of media sensationalism. Yes, it appears a virus found in one species of Old World bat seems to be a distant relative of Sars-CoV2. But the two viruses diverged 40-70 years ago and are no more similar than we are to chimpanzees. This (Old World) bat virus cannot spread from bat to human. It is humans that caused this pandemic and who are spreading it around the world. Killing bats is not a solution to preventing outbreaks of zoonotic diseases.
A recent Reddit post asked us “Aren’t bats virusy AF?” According to a recent paper by Nardus Mollentze the answer is: No more so than other orders of mammals or birds. He finds that “The proportion of viruses that infects humans varies minimally across reservoir taxanomic orders”. (Click link above for entire paper by Nardus Mollentze – Medical Research Council–University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, Glasgow, United Kingdom;
Below are excerpts from several other recent resources that also offer a balanced view of the possible origins of COVID-19. Click on the quote for a link to the research.
From Bat Conservation Trust – United Kingdom
” … the pandemic was caused by people. Human activities that alter the environment can increase the risk of disease spillovers from wildlife to people (a zoonotic spillover is the transmission of a pathogen from an animal to a human).”
From Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation – Austin, TX
“It has been a bad decade for bats. Prior to the emergence of COVID-19, they were already in severe decline worldwide. Now, they are blamed as the culprits behind one of the costliest pandemics in modern history, even though the source and method of transmission haven’t been identified. Although scientists have an obligation to promptly disclose new threats, premature speculation about bats has been exaggerated in attention-grabbing media headlines. The result has been needless confusion, leading to the demonization, eviction, and slaughtering of bats even where they are most needed.”
And
“Public overreaction to hypothetical threats of disease from bat droppings, or even bat breath, could prove disastrous, leading to intolerance and widespread killing of bats. Media speculation has already caused harm that could last for decades.”
by Dr. Tigga Kingston – Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Founder and Director of the Southeast Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit.
“SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes the disease Covid-19 in people. A virus related to SARS-CoV-2, called RatG2013, was isolated from an intermediate horseshoe bat from China in 2013, and that led to suggestions that perhaps the bat virus jumped from bats to people. There has been a flurry of research since, and now we know this is extremely unlikely for a couple of reasons.”
by Dr. Sheema Abdul Aziz, Project Pteropus Rimba, Malaysia
“Public speculation about the link between bats and diseases is dangerous and unhelpful—particularly when the supporting evidence is still weak. When bats continue to be framed so negatively in disease research and its media coverage, this results in unnecessary scaremongering that does nothing to help address the actual outbreak, but does instead stoke fear and hatred of bats—an already maligned animal group that continues to suffer from an undeserved negative public image.”
From Melissa Ingala (PhD Candidate at The Richard Gilbert Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History) and Ariadna Morales (Post-Doc at American Museum of Natural History)
“Many people are under the impression that all bats carry diseases that could pose threats to humans. This concern has recently increased because a virus hosted by one bat species seems to be a distant relative of SARS-CoV2. There have been many studies suggesting that because of their ability to fly, unique immune systems, and colonial nature, bats are special reservoirs for zoonotic pathogens–organisms that cause disease and are naturally transmitted between animals and humans. However, a recent study showed that when we account for species richness (i.e. the number of species in an evolutionary group), bats are no more likely to transmit zoonotic viruses than other groups of mammals.”
Amy Fraenkel – Executive Secretary of the United Nations’ Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals
“First, let’s look at what we know. Bats do not spread COVID-19. COVID-19 is being transmitted from humans to other humans. Virologists are in total agreement that the spread of the virus across the planet has been due to human to human rather than animal to human contact. Moreover, there is no evidence that bats infected humans with COVID-19 to begin with. Inaccurate reports suggesting otherwise may be contributing to the ill-advised killing of bats.”