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Blaming The Bats
d'alz writes "Bats have long been the subject of various conflicting theories. They have been linked with lethal viruses that cause Ebola hemorrhagic fever, SARS, Nipah or Hendra.
But of late researchers have taken a complete shift in these theories. They now claim that bats are being blamed for human mistakes. It now seems that these outbreaks could be a direct result of the encroachments that took place over the years in the rainforests." From the article: "Emerging viruses like the one that causes SARS are symptoms of the drastic, large-scale changes humans are making in the life of the planet. At a time of intense concern about avian flu, it is hardly controversial to argue that human health is linked to animal health. But the field challenges traditional academic divisions, especially the cultural divide between doctors and veterinarians."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4398660.stm article saying Vampire Bats in brazil are killing humans (23 in the last 2 months.) In all 1,300 people have been treated for rabies from bat bites. Some experts blame it on deforestation. Others blame it on lots of cows (really, see article). "Mass attacks on humans have occurred in other cattle regions in Latin America when the cattle are suddenly removed."
Funnypics
This whole idea is just plain batty.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
Bat Poop = Guano Guano = Fertilizer for Hops Hops = Good Beer Beer = good Therefore Bats = Good!
I only blame bats for The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice's worst mistake (unless you count Exit to Eden...)
They use radar
I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realised that humans are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern... a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, you are a plague, and we... are the cure.
And who is surprised by this?
...have entered the country illegally and are the primary reason your welfare queen ass doesn't have a job.
This is also tied to the large increases in industrial style farming in Brazil. There were a few news segments on CBC last year about the large exodus of Canadian farmers to Brazil.
The costs of farming are so low in Brazil that farmers can make back capital costs in a few years rather than a few decades. The biggest problem with this is that the methods are simply being moved from one region to another with a somewhat calous disregard for local limitations and impact.
This simply reflects trends in other sectors, but reinforces Brazillian farming practices which have very serious drawbacks when scaled up. Economies of scale can easily become diseconomies of scale if a threshold is passed and pasting large scale 'cut and run' on top of 'slash and burn' certainly seems dubious.
The fact that farming is so heavily subsidized worldwide doesn't help matters either.
Humans are a disease of the planetary organism, blahblahblah. Whatever.
I didn't RTFA so somebody read it and tell me if I'm right.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
We really should be blaming the hitters.
I suggest a reasonable compromise: let's blame Batman.
Bats are bugs, right?
It seems entirely reasonable that nature would adapt to exploit the relatively recent abundance of new food source: human beings. Mmmmmm. Tastes like chicken.
all this time we were blaming steroids, but someone's been corking the bats?
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
trees of mass deciduation. Be very afraid - the next cloud you see could be a giant mushroom-shaped cirrus cloud. This November vote Republican - we'll smoke out nature and eliminate it wherever it is!
If humans kill animals, it is the humans' fault. If animals kill humans, it is the humans' fault.
Yep - that pretty much sums it up.
>"it is hardly controversial to argue that human health is linked to animal health." I would argue that perhaps the greater problem is the number of people living in close proximity to these animals. Whereas the diseases listed above may have been confined to non-human animals for long periods of time, the frequency of jumping to humans must depend on the amount of contact they both have. I don't know to what degree animal health fits into this, unless you suggest animals have weakened immune systems due to abnormal environmental stresses. The term for diseases (usually animal in origin) that can jump to humans is zoonosis, and the wikipedia article here may be a more valuable reference than the submitter's comments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis The events that change the degree of association of humans and animals, such as raising domestic animals as livestock and other similar agricultural and cultural changes may have a bigger impact on the number of new (to humans) pathogens than the health of the zoonotic population.
should be flagged as flame bait.
the cultural divide between doctors and veterinarians.
The cultural divide between doctors and veterinarians.
I'm sorry. You have reached a number that is no longer in service. Message 002.
I suspect the cultural divide between doctors and veterinarians can wait till Monday.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Was the researcher's report put in a professional clear plastic binder?
This is a sig. Deal with it.
No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Bats? Bats have been considered a source of Ebola, SARS, and other virulent contaigens? But now some scientist types have awaken from their delusional state and remembered their theory from a decade ago that all these diseases are showing up because of man's encroashment on previously untouched parts of the environment... and we're supposed to buy it? After "bats" was put on the table as a serious contender they expect us to accept the takeback and revert to their time tested "human existence is its own worst enemy" fallback position?
Bats?
What the hell? When did this theory start getting serious recognition anyway? I feel like I did 5 or 6 years ago when seemingly out of no where everyone was talking about the theory of the extinction of dinosaurs being caused by an asteroid impact as being more or less fact. When I was in middle school and high school there were a number of theories discussed and no one was given considerably more or less weight than the others. There was the asteroid theory, of course. There was also a climate change theory, a disease theory, a species encroachment theory and probably a couple others I'm not remembering. Then seemingly a few years later I'm reading a web site or a news report or watching TV or something and the death of dinosaurs is attributed to that asteroid, as if it were written on stone and handed down from on high.
I know now that there was the discovery and research of the yuccatan crater, but still it was very disconcerting that something so fundamental in the "modern" history of the planet had gone from multi-theory to essentially a single theory and I hadn't heard anything about it until some time after the fact. Must have missed that all important week the world was abuzz with the massive shift in dinosaur extinction thought.
So anyway...
Bats.
Really? That's just seems loopy. Of course, encroachment on African, Asian, or Central/South American jungles isn't that good of an explanation for SARS or Bird Flu either, but at least it aint bats. Seriously, bats? Who comes up with this stuff?
Many infectious diseases, in particular the more serious ones, are probably the result of human encroachment into new territory, as well as keeping domesticated animals in large numbers, since animals are the reservoir where new viruses, as well as some common epidemics, come from. Other behaviors that make the situation worse are overuse of antibiotics and widespread travel. Unfortunately, there are no simple solutions to these problems, since it would be impossible to give up these behaviors. Maybe we're lucky and medicine will find a solution before the next big epidemics.
Never mind. I know what it is. You hominids are jealous of the wings.
That's what you get for stopping in Bat Country.
After all, grues and bats are related, aren't they ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
If you don't pay attention, it's nobody's fault but your own if you get surprised this way.
Luis and Walter Alvarez proposed the asteroid-impact theory in 1980, not as speculation, but because of the global evidence of iridium enrichment at the K-T boundary. This was reinforced by the discovery of the Chicxulub crater in 1990. To me, that's somewhat more than 5-6 years ago, but you might be using a different calendar... Or a chronosynclastic infundibulum as a proxy server.
And look! Here's a report suggesting that bats are the reservoir for Ebola infection - from 1996.
Wake up and join us in the 21st century. It's lovely and warm here.
This was in Africa where normally bats will leave you alone and will fly away if they see people. This one looked a bit strange and when I walked past it dropped down onto me. Luckily for me it didn't bite and I managed to flip it off. The bat was obviously feverish and had the right symptoms.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I might be able to spell "scientific".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
There's an ecological theory that's been around for a decade or more, in which viruses co-evolve with hosts as a kind of natural defense of the host's ecological niche.
Many animal species harbor viruses that are deadly to other animals, but apparently have few or no effects on them. Hantavirus in rodents is an example.
So -- the animal population is sitting there using the available resources in an area, and another population tries to move in. If alien species is immunologically naive, the native species doesn't need claws or fangs, it's got a much more powerful biological warfare defense.
I suspect some of the primitive human horror of waste spaces comes from this. We know in our bones that infection lurks there. Only hunger or fear drives us into these places, and as popluations increase we'll see more and more emergent viruses.
So -- why not bats? Not the bats we're used to, the species that are alien to our native habitats. It's not as if the forests defend themselves by having trees get and club us to death; the forest's natural biological defense is goign to be an animal, and the more closely related the more familiar the virus will be with its new host.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Anyone remember the story about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds coming true? There were crows (or ravens, I forget) that started attacking cars, and now are attacking people in some small town in England? ^^
Monkey is kept in a cage. Monkey pulls the arm off visitor, who proceeds to die. Question: Does the 'blame' lie on the monkey who pulled the arm off, or does the 'blame' lie on the people who kept monkey in cage?
I thought, or hoped, that doctors would be past this type of rhetorical discussion long ago.
Bats are an incredibly misunderstood animal, with far more benefit to humans than generally thought. They're also incredibly interesting. Check out the Bat Conservation International website for a lot of interesting information.
http://www.batcon.org/home/default.asp
it's that diseases such as Sarburg and Ebola have an easier transmission vector if humans engage in direct contact with bat feces by either eating them, collecting fresh bat guano in caves (where the infectious load is still in active form), or collect fruit near bat caves where it is more likely to be active.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Most major human diseases (polio, smallpox, mumps, black plague, etc.) were originally carried by animals, especially domesticated animals or pests. Sure, as man comes into contact with previously isolated species, we will continue to bring new diseases to the forefront. Would it be better if we were still living in caves?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD