In a cave in the Chinese province of Yunnan, creamy dollops of limestone are suspended from the ceiling. It’s warm, humid and stinky. Nestled between the rock formations are thousands of horseshoe bats, squabbling and jostling for roosts.
It was a cave like this that possibly was the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that devastated the world in 2020. While the vaccine response to SARS-CoV-2 was developed in record-breaking time, there is very little to suggest that we would be able to move so quickly against a new virus. And a new virus is just a matter of time.
It was bats in a cave in China that harboured SARS-CoV-1 before it jumped to humans in 2002, killing 800 people. Lyssa virus, Hendra virus, Marburg, Nipah and Ebola are all viruses that jumped from bats to humans. It is not entirely clear why bats have been associated with such spillovers. One possibility is that destruction of their habitats by deforestation or global warming have caused bats to migrate to human-dense areas, resulting in spillovers. Bats are also among the most populous mammals in the world, and despite their bad reputation, they play an important role in the ecosystem.
