Why do bats carry so many viruses? They're vectors for Covid-19 and Ebola as well as old terrors like rabies.
Bat immune systems are unusually strong. Their cells emit very high levels of interferon, which slows down protein synthesis. So when a virus takes over a cell and starts making new copies of itself, it can't assemble all the proteins to make new viruses.
Bat immune systems may also be stronger because bats fly. Flying requires a lot of energy, keeping them in a hot and fever-like body state. This can cook viruses to death.
Creatures with strong immune systems tend to have the most dangerous pathogens. Anything that survives in them will be hard for others to beat. If you get a virus, your body will fight it by running a fever and emitting interferon. This stops many viruses. But making your insides more batlike isn't going to stop a bat virus.
There's a human version of this in European settlers having diseases that killed most of the native Americans and Australians, rather than the other way around. Having lived in dense cities and traded goods and diseases with the rest of Eurasia, Europeans' immune systems had evolved to be strong. So they were sources of strong diseases, especially smallpox, that killed most of the local folks.
The bat immune system might have given us our idea of vampirism, via rabies. The symptoms of both conditions overlap quite a bit. You get rabies from being bitten by a bat or an infected human. You become a vampire from being bitten by a nocturnal creature between bat and human.
It's really a shame about bats, because they're amazing. If bats didn't exist, the idea of a mammal that flies, uses sonar, sleeps upside-down all day, eats mosquitos, and poops super-fertilizer would seem batshit crazy. Unfortunately, their strong immune systems give them a viral dark side that lives up to vampirical legend.
Bat immune systems are unusually strong. Their cells emit very high levels of interferon, which slows down protein synthesis. So when a virus takes over a cell and starts making new copies of itself, it can't assemble all the proteins to make new viruses.
Bat immune systems may also be stronger because bats fly. Flying requires a lot of energy, keeping them in a hot and fever-like body state. This can cook viruses to death.
Creatures with strong immune systems tend to have the most dangerous pathogens. Anything that survives in them will be hard for others to beat. If you get a virus, your body will fight it by running a fever and emitting interferon. This stops many viruses. But making your insides more batlike isn't going to stop a bat virus.
There's a human version of this in European settlers having diseases that killed most of the native Americans and Australians, rather than the other way around. Having lived in dense cities and traded goods and diseases with the rest of Eurasia, Europeans' immune systems had evolved to be strong. So they were sources of strong diseases, especially smallpox, that killed most of the local folks.
The bat immune system might have given us our idea of vampirism, via rabies. The symptoms of both conditions overlap quite a bit. You get rabies from being bitten by a bat or an infected human. You become a vampire from being bitten by a nocturnal creature between bat and human.
It's really a shame about bats, because they're amazing. If bats didn't exist, the idea of a mammal that flies, uses sonar, sleeps upside-down all day, eats mosquitos, and poops super-fertilizer would seem batshit crazy. Unfortunately, their strong immune systems give them a viral dark side that lives up to vampirical legend.
