The outbreak of new coronavirus pneumonia from Wuhan has entered the tough stage and spread to all provinces in China and even the world, the number of confirmed cases that have doubled everywhere has raised people's understanding of infectious diseases at the beginning of 2020 to a new height, in recent decades, the world has experienced too many dangerous infectious disease outbreaks, these viruses are transmitted from animal hosts to humans, and the strangest thing is that the source host of the virus is once again focused on bats
What are the qualities of bats that can carry so many terrible viruses?
What is the relationship between the fox bat that has recently ravaged in Queensland, Australia, and the Chinese chrysanthemum bat that caused pneumonia in Wuhan?
Commonly known as bats, Pterodactyls is the second largest group of mammals after rodents, accounting for nearly a quarter of the global mammals, they are also the only flying group of mammals, in the morphological structure of both the dexterity of birds and the strength of mammals, bats can be macroscopically divided into two suborders of large bats and small bats
Members of the macroceller suborder are usually larger with larger eyes and better eyesight, and their faces resemble miniature foxes, feeding on fruit nectar, hence the name fruit bat
The fox bat is a family of fruit bats, members of the suborder Of the small bats usually have small eyes and vision deterioration, relying mainly on sonar to identify objects, there are 15 families, about 900 species.
The most recently discussed due to the coronavirus outbreak is the chrysanthemum bat, which belongs to the suborder Chrysanthemum bat family, the second largest bat family, which feeds on insects that live nocturnal flights
In 55 million years ago, insects took the lead in flying into the sky, birds followed closely behind, bats as the only mammals that rushed into the sky, they were torn open in the sky of bird hegemony, and the night occupation became the fourth type of flying creatures after insects, pterosaurs, birds, and would fly in organisms, bats are based on rich and nutritious flying insect food to live extremely moist, although the pterodactyl order is only a small branch in the biological classification, but monopolizes one-fifth of the total number of mammals. Very prosperous
Although the ability to fly allows bats to win more living space, however, bats pay a high price for this, bats during flight, metabolic level will increase by 15-16 times, for mammals, high metabolism also has a side effect, that is, it will inevitably damage DNA for thousands of years, bats evolved a powerful DNA repair function, it is even blessed by "disaster", rarely get cancer, the average life expectancy can reach 30-40 years, when flying, the body temperature of bats will be as high as 40 degrees, Desperately burning calories, but also adjusting their immune system to "normally open mode", equivalent to "fever" all the time, bat cells are very heat tolerant, which also inhibits the replication of the virus to a certain extent
Of course, millions of years of common life has allowed some viruses to adapt to high body temperature, which means that after infecting humans, the conventional fever mechanism of our body may not be able to effectively interfere with the replication of the virus, and more importantly, these RNA viruses have a very high genetic diversity in bats for a long time, and there is a high probability of suddenly acquiring the ability to infect other mammals outside of bats, in fact, bats have an extraordinary position in the biological chain of the virus, and are revered as "nature's living virus library". SARS is just one of many that inhabit bats
In 1994, in the town of Hendra, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia, the horses of a racecourse contracted acute respiratory disease and infected people, which were studied because humans destroyed the native forest and left the local fruit bats with nowhere to go before flying into the city, infecting the horses and people with hendra virus.
Hendra virus "close relative" Nipah virus is one of the most dangerous viruses in the world, is an acute contact, high lethal, zoonotic infectious disease, clinical symptoms are mainly manifested as fever, headache, encephalitis and cough, etc., due to the nipah virus and Hendra's kinship, bats have become the first suspected target, Malaysian bat species many studies confirmed
There are 4 species of fruit-eating bats and 1 species of carnivorous bats with antibodies to Nipah virus in their bodies, and although bats are natural hosts of many deadly viruses in recent years and may also be important carriers, it should be noted that bats should not be responsible for various deadly diseases
Bats are an important part of the earth's ecosystem, such as fruit-eating bats are the propagators of seeds and pollen, which is crucial for maintaining ecological balance, and for humans, insectivorous bats are natural enemies of pests, are the "beneficial beasts" of human agricultural production, in traditional Chinese culture, due to the homophony of "bat" and "Fu", bats are synonymous with auspiciousness, and the image of bats often appears in ornaments, utensils, and buildings
So who turned bats from an ordinary creature into a "grim reaper"?
The answer is: human beings themselves
Bats carry viruses are not a year or two, many viruses have coexisted with bats for several years, decades, or even tens of millions of years, through a long evolution, they and bats have developed a symbiotic coexistence relationship, but this balance has changed with the invasion of the ecological environment by humans, the continuous expansion of human activity range has encroached on the habitat and food resources of bats, improper land use makes bats enter the range of human activities to forage, and even live next to humans. These objective realities give bats high-frequency contact with humans and human livestock, pets, and crops, giving the virus the opportunity to spread from bats to humans
The previously mentioned Hendra virus, the spread of Nipah virus, is due to the horse farm and pigsty gradually covered the range of the bat, and finally led to the deadly virus into the human body, in the highly developed traffic population today, the consumption of wild game has become a very dangerous thing
SARS transmission route has basically been confirmed, that is, infected bats civets were brought to the human table, Ebola, Middle East respiratory syndrome are also related to animals, this time the spread of the new coronavirus, the illegal sale of wild animals in Wuhan has also been "confirmed", the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that after the outbreak of pneumonia infected by the new coronavirus, the virus was not only seen in the infected human body
The researchers also isolated the virus from these stalls illegally selling wild animals at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, which can be described as conclusive evidence
Scientists have warned that if we continue to destroy the living environment of wild animals, and even continue to eat wild animals, not just bats
Viruses that are harmless to other wild animals will once again enter human society and bring great disasters
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