> the rats are effectively as blind as the bat in the dark
Are they? Aren't rats nocturnal in the first place, meaning evolution should have given them some benefit in that environment? AFAIK, rats have pretty OK contrast/motion detection even in low light situations.
I guess if "in the dark" means "low light" or "total darkness". You're probably right for "total darkness" but if it's "low light", I think the rats would "see" better than the bats.
You might be right. The paper mentioned the rats preferred hunting near the light barrier but also mentioned they probably climbed the fabric for an aerial advantage (they didn’t seem to prefer hunting near the light barrier once the fabric was removed).
> The behavior is all the more impressive given that the rodents hunt at night, when they are effectively blind; the rats may rely on their whiskers to detect changes in air currents caused by the bats’ flapping wings.
Bats are one of the largest disease reservoirs on the planet for all kinds nasty novel viruses that could potentially jump to humans.
Bats have crazy immune systems that let them harbor all kinds of nasty stuff without it killing them on account of their unclean communal living habitat. Bats are in close contact where waste and bodily fluids are constantly coming into contact with other members, and these all carry pathogens.
Bat immune systems evolved as a defense mechanism. Bat viral loads are high, and the viruses get to evolve rapidly, come into contact with other virus genomes, and essentially explore the state space of potential virus genomes quickly. Constantly evolving novel glycoproteins, etc. Bats are essentially a virus optimization battleground.
These rats are an invasive species (to the cave) that also live in close proximity to humans. They've just been discovered hunting bats, meaning they're coming into close contact with bat viruses and potentially serving to introduce these into rat and, possibly subsequently, human populations.
Additionally, if the viruses can jump to rats, they're in a state where they could already be primed to infect us.
Bat viruses are no joke. Since our immune systems aren't familiar with novel viruses, and the viruses aren't adapted to not kill their human hosts at first, novel bat viruses can do a lot of harm.
Not necessarily a new path, but a previously unknown path. Any place that bats directly interact with ‘land mammals’ leads to a mess of viral
recombination and reassortment… hence why the agriculture/wild interface in China is the site of so many spillovers. Rats especially carry similar viruses with many features that increase tropism, so the fact that rats are feeding on bats means we’re going to get a ton of crossover viruses especially well suited for transmission in mammals.
One such study’s key paragraph…
> While uncommon for coronaviruses of bats, furin cleavage sites are commonly found in coronaviruses of rodents and it is perhaps fitting to note that proteolytic processing of the coronavirus spike protein was first recognized in the model rodent coronavirus, murine hepatitis virus, MHV-A59 [53], with later analyses demonstrating the importance of furin for the proteolytic cleavage and function of its spike protein [54].
Last week I saw a couple of small hawks attacking a bat swarm as they came out of their cave at sunset. Less of a transmission vector probably, but there seems to be a lot more interaction between bats and other animals than I thought. I wonder if domestic cats attack bats.
> - and what a fantastic new path for pathogen transmission.
on the bright side and if history is of any help, as long as future-to-be-debarred "experts" aren't doing gain-of-function research on bat viruses while lying about it, we don't have much to fear.
Official US Congress report, mandated under Biden and whose results came under Biden, says the virus has "characteristic not found in nature" and that a lab-leak is the most likely source:
And Peter Daszak has been debarred, defunded and prevented from ever receiving funding from the US again.
I'm more worried about humans lying and humans siding with lying humans to then lie some more, worldwide, to the public --for years before the truth finally came up to light-- much more than I'm about rats attacking bats.
> mandated under Biden and whose results came under Biden
You missed the part where the original mandate was along party lines with Democrats supporting it and Republicans not, to investigate how the Trump administration handled the pandemic response. Republicans took control of the House and then redefined the agenda to be their own partisan viewpoint, to confirm what they already believed about gain-of-function and lab leak theories. They produced a nice Big Beautiful Report with a debatable connection to facts, which is not surprising in the least.
> before the truth finally came up to light
If you are looking to politicians for the truth...
embedding-shape|3 months ago
Are they? Aren't rats nocturnal in the first place, meaning evolution should have given them some benefit in that environment? AFAIK, rats have pretty OK contrast/motion detection even in low light situations.
I guess if "in the dark" means "low light" or "total darkness". You're probably right for "total darkness" but if it's "low light", I think the rats would "see" better than the bats.
nortlov|3 months ago
aqme28|3 months ago
vasco|3 months ago
Presumably it's been there for a long time and we just noticed.
chairmansteve|3 months ago
As a previous commenter noted, rats are an invasive species in the expanding human/wildland interface. So they will be encountering novel bat viruses.
There may be other existing bat to human transmission paths, but maybe not....
spankibalt|3 months ago
We just noticed bat snatching. I doubt it's new discovery that rats also eat bats whenever the opportunity comes knocking.
Also: Bats -> rats -> (house) cats -> humans.
dgroshev|3 months ago
neom|3 months ago
echelon|3 months ago
Bats have crazy immune systems that let them harbor all kinds of nasty stuff without it killing them on account of their unclean communal living habitat. Bats are in close contact where waste and bodily fluids are constantly coming into contact with other members, and these all carry pathogens.
Bat immune systems evolved as a defense mechanism. Bat viral loads are high, and the viruses get to evolve rapidly, come into contact with other virus genomes, and essentially explore the state space of potential virus genomes quickly. Constantly evolving novel glycoproteins, etc. Bats are essentially a virus optimization battleground.
These rats are an invasive species (to the cave) that also live in close proximity to humans. They've just been discovered hunting bats, meaning they're coming into close contact with bat viruses and potentially serving to introduce these into rat and, possibly subsequently, human populations.
Additionally, if the viruses can jump to rats, they're in a state where they could already be primed to infect us.
Bat viruses are no joke. Since our immune systems aren't familiar with novel viruses, and the viruses aren't adapted to not kill their human hosts at first, novel bat viruses can do a lot of harm.
mikeyouse|3 months ago
One such study’s key paragraph…
> While uncommon for coronaviruses of bats, furin cleavage sites are commonly found in coronaviruses of rodents and it is perhaps fitting to note that proteolytic processing of the coronavirus spike protein was first recognized in the model rodent coronavirus, murine hepatitis virus, MHV-A59 [53], with later analyses demonstrating the importance of furin for the proteolytic cleavage and function of its spike protein [54].
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235277142...
chairmansteve|3 months ago
dwd|3 months ago
lurquer|3 months ago
TacticalCoder|3 months ago
on the bright side and if history is of any help, as long as future-to-be-debarred "experts" aren't doing gain-of-function research on bat viruses while lying about it, we don't have much to fear.
Official US Congress report, mandated under Biden and whose results came under Biden, says the virus has "characteristic not found in nature" and that a lab-leak is the most likely source:
https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec...
And Peter Daszak has been debarred, defunded and prevented from ever receiving funding from the US again.
I'm more worried about humans lying and humans siding with lying humans to then lie some more, worldwide, to the public --for years before the truth finally came up to light-- much more than I'm about rats attacking bats.
chairmansteve|3 months ago
I wouldn't be so confident. HIV and Ebola came from the wild. Bird Flu also has the potential to be really bad.
rootusrootus|3 months ago
You missed the part where the original mandate was along party lines with Democrats supporting it and Republicans not, to investigate how the Trump administration handled the pandemic response. Republicans took control of the House and then redefined the agenda to be their own partisan viewpoint, to confirm what they already believed about gain-of-function and lab leak theories. They produced a nice Big Beautiful Report with a debatable connection to facts, which is not surprising in the least.
> before the truth finally came up to light
If you are looking to politicians for the truth...