What did one bat say to another?
Let’s hang around together. But not if you’re sick!
People have gotten used to spreading out. They’ve stayed apart to slow the spread of the coronavirus. This is called social distancing. And scientists just discovered that sick vampire bats do it too!
Simon Ripperger led the study in Lamanai, Belize. He has studied bats in the past. The expert has a message. “Bats are not scary!” he told News-O-Matic. “They are interesting.” His team already knew that sickness led to fewer in the bats. The experts wanted to make sure this was true in the wild though. They released a report about this on Tuesday.
Ripperger and his team caught 31 vampire bats. The experts made half of the bats feel sick. They gave the animals a drug that affected their . The shot didn’t give the bats a disease. The team gave the other bats a shot that did not affect them.
Then, the scientists put trackers on the bats. They released the animals. The researchers noticed that the “sick” bats spent time with fewer groupmates. “Sick” bats also stayed away from healthy ones.
Usually, vampire bats are social. “They groom each other,” Ripperger said. “They even share!” However, if one is sick, it becomes antisocial. That means it spends less time with other bats. And it’s less likely to pass a disease along.
Ripperger said we can learn from these bats. Diseases go from bat to bat. And the coronavirus moves from person to person. “How we behave influences how a disease ,” the expert said. “Understanding social behavior is for understanding how diseases work.”
Ripperger thinks bats are important. But he doesn’t think you should try to catch one. “They are wild animals,” the expert shared. Bats can carry diseases such as the coronavirus. So it is probably best to keep your distance!
Updated October 29, 2020, 5:01 P.M. (ET)
By Alexa Tirapelli
