Bats carry a variety of viruses, are a mobile virus reservoir, such a dangerous species, why can't we eliminate them all? The proposal to eliminate bats is really a one-trick move, rough and decisive, but unfortunately, this proposal was rejected. There are two main reasons why we can't eliminate bats: the first is that we can't do it, and the second is that we don't have the ability to bear the consequences of eliminating bats.
Bats carry a large number of viruses, and the number of common viruses alone exceeds 100 species, many of which are seriously harmful to humans and can kill people. Among these viruses, you are familiar with several, such as the new crown virus and SARS virus, which are widely spread among the population and cause great turmoil in the world, as well as the Ebola virus, which has a mortality rate of more than 50% after poisoning, and the rabies virus, which represents death after the onset of the disease.
A bat is a living virus reservoir, and what is even more frightening is that this virus database will not only fly everywhere, but also have a very large number. Bats belong to the order Pterodactyl and are the only mammals that can fly. There are 1,300 species of bats in the world, accounting for 20% of the total number of mammals, and bats are found all over the world except for the polar regions of the Arctic and antarctic and some small islands in the ocean.
There is really no good way for humans to eliminate a species that occupies a vast expanse of land and is still flying in the air. When a war is fired, it is often not harmful to the enemy, and it will first bring down friendly forces.
The most famous example is the war against rabbits in Australia, 24 rabbits that came to Australia with British colonists in the 19th century, grew wildly in the New World without natural enemies, and by the beginning of the 20th century they had multiplied to 10 billion. The government introduced the rabbit's natural enemy, the fox, to deal with it, which was initially very effective, but after the fox caught the rabbit for a few days, it gave up the rabbit that ran fast and went to catch the small rat kangaroo in Australia. In order to protect the rare rat kangaroos, people can only eliminate foxes first. Since the fox is disobedient, change it to a hunter. The bounty hunters set out in a group and began to hunt rabbits on a large scale, but unfortunately there were not enough manpower, and the speed of firepower to eliminate rabbits could not keep up with the speed of rabbit breeding.
In the face of more and more rabbits killed, the Australian government, in a fit of rage, used bombers against the Japanese invaders in World War II to airdrop poison gas bombs to bomb rabbits. This is a trick to kill 1,000 enemies and injure 1,000 2, the rabbits were damaged, other marsupials, and the cattle and sheep in the pasture were all poisoned.
After the failure of physical and chemical attacks, humans launched a biochemical attack, introducing a myxoma virus from South America to kill rabbits, myxoma virus relies on mosquitoes to spread, infected rabbits with viruses, the mortality rate exceeds 99%, and most importantly, this virus only kills rabbits, does not infect humans and other animals. The myxovirus finally triumphed, and by 1952, more than 95 percent of rabbits had been wiped out. But the war wasn't over, and the surviving rabbits gradually developed antibodies to the myxomavirus, and the virus's fatality rate against rabbits dropped from 99 percent to 40 percent. After the rabbits took a breather, the numbers began to rise. By the end of the 20th century, the australian rabbit population had recovered to 600 million.
On the independent continent of Australia, more than 100 years of human rabbit wars, various weapons have been in turn, and rabbits are still not extinct. If you replace the enemy with a bat, it will live in a wider area, the terrain will be more complex, and the difficulty coefficient of destruction will be higher. Imagine how we can effectively eliminate bats by introducing predators into species, or using physical, chemical, and biological weapons from humans. Remember, the premise is that the environment cannot be damaged and other animals cannot be harmed.
We don't have Thanos' ability to make half the world's life disappear silently with a snap of a finger, and we can't complete the task of eliminating bats. But that's not the point, the point is that even if we have the weapon to destroy bats, we can't destroy it. In Australia, the rabbit is an exotic species, after controlling its number, the ground that has been chewed by the rabbit grows grass, and the native animals such as the rare rabbit ear possum return to the territory occupied by the rabbit, and the ecology is restored. However, the status of bats is different from that of Australian rabbits, which occupies an irreplaceable important position in the ecological chain, and the entire ecological chain collapses after elimination.
On the surface, bats are not in line with human activities, but after the disappearance of bats, humans will directly face tragic consequences, at least 2 consequences will appear in the short term, one is a sharp increase in the number of human-eating mosquitoes, and the other is a significant reduction in the number of crops that people eat.
70% of bats catch insects to eat, a bat can eat an insect equivalent to 1/3 of its own weight every night, and a bat weighing 20 grams can eliminate 4,000 mosquitoes in one night. In fact, compared with bats, mosquitoes are the devils who kill the most people and threaten the most. The coronavirus in the bat's body is not transmitted directly to humans, but to humans through the intermediate host pangolin. The malaria parasite in the stomach of mosquitoes directly infects humans with malaria. Malaria kills 600,000 people each year. According to statistics released by the World Health Organization, mosquitoes harvest 725,000 lives every year, making them the most murderous animals, more than humans and venomous snakes. If you had to do a multiple-choice question, which would you choose between eliminating bats and eliminating mosquitoes?
In addition to mosquitoes, bats prey on moths and beetles. Birds also eat bugs, but most birds catch insects during the day, and bats that catch insects at night make up for the lack of time for birds to catch insects. There are many bugs that move out at night, in addition to mosquitoes that bite people and bite livestock, there are also nocturnal moths. Many species of larvae in the family Nocturnidae are pests that nibble on crops, such as armyworms, corn borers, small ground tigers, yellow ground tigers, and cotton bollworms. For crops, bats are beneficial animals that protect crops. After the extinction of one insect-eating bird, another insect-eating bird will replace its niche. But after the night-catching bat disappeared, it could not find another creature to replace its insect-catching position.
In addition, bats have a wide range of recipes and different tastes, in addition to bats that eat pests, there are many bats that eat fruit nectar, than bats. In tropical and subtropical virgin forests, fruit bats are a key species for the transmission of seeds and pollen. Fruit bats eat the fruit and excrete the seeds elsewhere to grow. Some figs can only take root and sprout after they have been digested by fruit bats and birds. There are more than 500 species of plants in the world whose flowers rely on fruit bats for pollination, including our favorite fruits such as bananas, mangoes, durians, and tequila, which makes tequila. The flowers of these plants do not bloom until night, emitting a rich aroma that attracts nocturnal fruit bats to pollinate.
In addition to preying on insects and spreading pollen, bats are also food for other animals, including birds, snakes, cats, monkeys and raccoons. After the elimination of bats, many animals will starve to death, and the entire ecological chain will collapse.
Having said so many reasons why bats can't be killed, so let the bat fly freely, will the virus it carries not endanger humans? Don't worry, the bat's living field does not intersect with the human activity field, as long as it does not touch it, it will not transmit the virus to you. In fact, compared with bats, the flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches that we see every day, and rats hiding in the sewers are the more dangerous creatures that are more harmful to humans.
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