Bats Carry more Human-Infecting Viruses, Outbeating Rodents

A new study from the University of Colorado states that bats carry more viruses when compared to rodents. These viruses are easily transmitted between animals and humans.

Bats carry more than 60 human-infecting viruses know as zoonotic, reports LiveScience. Zoonotics are diseases that can be easily transmitted from animals to humans.

"There's been a lot of rumour that bats might be special in some way as far as their potential to host zoonotic diseases," Angela Luis, a postdoctoral fellow who conducted the research with Colleen Webb, a biology professor at Colorado State, said in a news statement.

Luis along with Webb scoured the existing studies in order to produce their new finding.

To find out the number of viruses bats carry in comparison to rodents, the researchers checked the number of viruses in rodents and found that out of 179 viruses, nearly 68 were zoonotic. In bats, they had 61 zoonotic viruses out of a total 137 viruses. Though the number in rodents is more, bats host more zoonotic viruses per species. Each bat hosts 1.79 zoonotic viruses, whereas rodents have 1.48 virus per species, reports LiveScience.

According to their finding, bats are a host of SARS, Ebola, Nipah and Hendra viruses. All these viruses are labeled as dangerous to humans. Researchers found that bats are capable of spreading these viruses between species, and these viruses spread easily among different bat species that dwell in the same geographic location.

Bats are really important ecologically, Luis continues to say. Through this study, the researchers aim to promote restraining bat and human contact, which will be helpful for both bat preservation and human health.

The finding was published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.