How Bats Can Transmit Viruses | Virus Hunters
You're standing at this abandoned mine. You can only see maybe two or three meters in before it's entirely black. But in the kind of haze, you can see the kind of decrepit, old bits of previous mining industry and overwhelmingly, the squawk of all these bats. Their wings beating in the darkness. Oh, you can hear them. And you know what kind of species are inside? And so what we're doing here is basically just checking to see if there's any signs of hunting. Yes.
So you guys are stopping people from coming here. That's your job. Masks on? Yes.
MAN 1: Masks on. [inaudible] All right. Let's check it out.
Yeah. See, you can see them right here. [bleep] Wow. Wow. So there's an entire colony in here.
MAN (VOICEOVER): This is the first time in my life I've been in a bat cave with bats flying around my head. But also, in the knowledge that bats contain viruses that are dangerous to humans, especially in places like Liberia, where we know Ebola came from, where all kinds of other viruses that we don't yet know about. So it really was kind of quite unnerving.
MAN: Wow.
CHRIS: Wow.
MAN (VOICEOVER): It was a relief to have Chris nearby. He was quite relaxed about the whole thing.
CHRIS (VOICEOVER): For me, because I'm a complete wildlife geek, I think that this is one of the most beautiful things that I've seen, even though I know that there is this potential risk. And people want these bats right, Chris? These are valuable. In many places, these are a preferred food item, where people will pay almost a premium price for something. So this would be a prime hunting ground for someone to come in here and just collect a whole bunch.
OK, so if you came in here as your average poacher, you're not wearing a mask, and there's no real protection, you could easily pick up any kind of-- This is the exact type of almost transmission scenario, where you are getting aerosolized urine, aerosolized feces. But also, if you're killing the bats, you're then exposed directly to their blood as well.
Wow.
CHRIS: Yes. Let's walk in a little bit. Wow, it just keeps going. This is absolutely insane. A lot of the old, iron ore processing equipment, I'm guessing. Is that right? And you guys, what are you looking for? What have you found?
Moses, what is that?
CHRIS: So a poacher came in here and set that up. Yes, exactly. Yes.
MAN (VOICEOVER): Moses and his team find this trap, which seems to suggest that humans have been inside.
CHRIS (VOICEOVER): So you have hunters, who were staying in this cave night after night, being exposed to bat feces, bat urine, bat bites. There's actually a horseshoe bats and a type of fruit bat. Horseshoe bats are known to be related, potentially, to COVID and also to Ebola.
Oh, wow. Oh, my God.
CHRIS (VOICEOVER): And we go further and further back into the depths of the cave. And Moses looks down. And he actually sees a whole host of dead bats on the ground.
CHRIS: Wow. This is insane.
MAN: This is a baby.
CHRIS: Yeah. Oh, my God. This one is probably a juvenile or sub-adult. This one's definitely a juvenile. So what caused this one to die? So you almost wonder if there was some sort of disease that spread through this community of bats. It would certainly explain why you have a variety of different age classes of bats that are all dead in the exact same spot. It feels like this is something that's really important to understand.
MAN (VOICEOVER): And Chris is fascinated by this. And it could be that these bats have died of some kind of virus. It really does feel like we're in a front line of something unknown. Young bats should not be dying basically. Not like this. And I think, obviously, the issue is if there's a poacher in here, and there's a dead bat, and there's blood or whatever, so there's a problem. So there's probably some sort of disease.
Exactly.
CHRIS (VOICEOVER): Bats were known to be the reservoir of Ebola. It also transmitted to other types of animals and then was transmitted to humans. This is the exact way that a new deadly virus could start.