Bats Carry More Diseases Than Rodents

It appears that bats could be more likely to carry disease than rodents. New research conducted at Colorado State University suggests that bats, while greatly outnumbered by their terrestrial cousins, carry far more zoonotic diseases, or diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans.

"There's been a lot of speculation that bats might be special in some way as far as their potential to host zoonotic diseases," said Angela Luis, a post doctoral fellow at Colorado State. Luis conducted the study with Colorado State biology professor Colleen Webb. "We found that although there are twice as many rodent species as there are bat species, bats hosted more zootonic viruses per species than rodents," Luis told Phys Org.

While bats are known to transmit deadly human diseases, like the SARS, Ebola, Nipah and Hendra viruses, they are vital to the ecosystem, pollinating and eating insects. In fact, bats eat so many insects that they save American agriculture at least $3 billion worth of pest control each year.

Despite their ecological (and economic) importance, humans should limit their exposure to bats. "Even though this work shows that bats are special as far as hosting these nasty diseases, they're really important ecologically," Luis said. "We want to promote limiting bat and human contact, which will be beneficial for both bat conservation and human health."

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