I must admit that bats are one of the cutest creatures in nature. They have adorable doe eyes and a fluffy tiny head. They are also vital to the ecosystem in eating pests and insects. However, the public generally view these innocent bats as blood-sucking monsters due to the stereotypes and generalized depictions of vampires in relation to bats by the media. I want to clarify that bats rarely attack humans. Bats would prefer eating fruits and sucking tiny droplets from other animals than fly over a human’s head.
One of my favorite pastimes is to go to the library and search up interesting articles. An article that caught my eyes was from a study from Berkeley. The study explains how bats carried and spread the Wuhan coronavirus, also known as the 2019-nCoV virus. Apparently, the coronavirus has many subcategories. The coronavirus is not new and has existed in the form of the common cold. The 2019-nCoV was reportedly traced to originate from animals such as bats.
Bats have been shown to be carriers of ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and rabies. Many of these novel viruses transfer indirectly to humans by jumping through animals such as the Asian palm civet for SARS, camels for MERS, and gorillas for ebola. A study by the American Society for Microbiology shows that the Wuhan coronavirus infects humans the same way as the SARS virus. They both attach onto the same receptor ACE2 to gain entry to the cell. This relationship between the SARS and the Wuhan coronavirus paves way for the development of a treatment for both viruses. This also makes the study of the civets, which are cats that defecate coffee beans as feces, much more important because they are also known carriers of the virus.
How did all these viruses originate from tiny-bodied bats?
According to the study from Berkeley, bats are the only flying mammals. Hence, the flying causes a lot of stress on the wings of the bats. The bats would need a high metabolic rate to maintain their vigorous physical activities. Logically, the stress on their wings should lead to the weakening of the bat’s immune system. Mutation of the genes would also cause the bats to be carriers of multiple viruses, infections, and diseases. However, bats are known to live a long life time of 40 years, so there must be some type of factors that allow the bats to survive the weakening of its immune system.
The immune system of bats is unique compared to many other mammals. Their helper T cells produce a protein that humans do not produce, which is the interferon-alpha protein. The interferon helps the cells of the bats to be defensive against the build-up of the evolving and replicating viruses in the bats. However, this does not mean the infections and viruses would go away; the interferons only help the bats survive the onslaught of potential novel diseases. This makes foreign creature’s interaction with the bats dangerous because the lack of the interferon protein would cause the person to experience the negative impact and side effects from the accumulated viruses. A relevant example is the recent outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan.
by Naive Health Lady Lu February 28, 2020
Naive Healthy Lady Lu 