For the study of the biological properties and disease transmittability of bats, it has been almost a cognitive blank for thousands of years. Even in modern times, when the SARS and Ebola periods experienced the pain caused by bats, people are still prone to scars and forget the pain.
No one expected that they would spend the Spring Festival in such a "home" way. Although the source of the new coronavirus pneumonia is not completely determined, all indications point to some kind of wild animal.
For a long time, humans have been better at coping with diseases of humans and domestic animals, but they are unfamiliar with diseases caused by wild animals.
It was only in the first half of the 20th century that scientists began to extend disease research to wild animals. The establishment of the Wildlife Diseases Association in 1951 marked the discipline as one of the internationally recognized sciences.
However, nearly 70 years later, do people really have a correct understanding of wildlife?
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Strange focus
Let's take this time, which is highly suspected of being the natural host of the virus, as an example, and see where people pay attention to bats.
By querying the "bat" keyword on a search engine, we found that no one realized that bats can spread disease without accidents.
In September 2019, before the outbreak had fermented. People's related searches for bats focus on popular science content such as "ultrasound", "radar", "bionics", followed by entertainment hotspots such as "Batman" and "movies". There is also a hot search: what is the sign that a bat flies home. It is clear that no bat has any knowledge of disease transmission.
Look at January 2020, when the fight against the epidemic is in full swing and all kinds of signs point to bats at the source of the new pneumonia virus. Panicked people are finally beginning to recall wildlife-related diseases such as "mink", "civets" during SARS in 2003, and "Ebola" caused by bats. We can also feel that at this time, the voice against wild game is rising, and people's understanding of wild animals has finally come to the level of infectious diseases.
However, even at this juncture, there are still a lot of people searching for superstitious content such as "the consequences of killing bats", "whether bats are rats changed", "bats flying into the house is unlucky", etc.
It's hard to reverse people's perceptions. After all, for thousands of years, bats have been immersed in a mysterious sustenance. Thanks to its "bat" character and the word "Fu" homophonous, and hanging upside down, there is the meaning of blessing (to), five bats refer to "five blessings", red bats refer to "Hong Fu", together with the deer refers to "Fulu", and with osmanthus appears to refer to "rich", becoming a popular mascot in architecture, ceramics, and embroidery.
However, the study of the biological properties and disease transmittability of bats has been almost a cognitive blank for thousands of years. Even in modern times, when the SARS and Ebola periods experienced the pain caused by bats, people are still prone to scars and forget the pain.
Human beings, don't "do" it again
Bats have evolved themselves into unsavory appearances, hiding in caves in the mountains and forests day and night, sealing a huge virus reservoir with their own bodies, how can they still deal with humans?
Wildlife is far away from cities and humans, seeking a place in the remote steppe forest desert. But human beings always refuse to let them go.
In our country, the bodies of wild animals face four fates.
When medicinal use of tiger and leopard bones, rhino horns, nail pieces, turtle plates, antelope horns, snakes.
Eaten pangolins, monitor lizards, bear paws, birds, turtles, snakes, frogs.
Collected tusks, rhino horns, hawksbill turtles, corals, bricks, nautilus.
Be pet birds, turtles, snakes, lizards.
Among them, being eaten is a very local ending. Chinese the "nourishing" effect on wild animals, there is always a kind of trust in fans, and they do not hesitate to illegally purchase them.
Take the most often eaten pangolins, for example, according to the United Nations data, China is a prominent destination for pangolin smuggling, and during the winter season, pangolins from neighboring countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines are continuously smuggled into China, serving countless "health bureau" tables, and even pangolins from some African countries have also been snared.
Chinese people are so keen on pangolins, nothing more than because pangolins are good at punching holes, the ancients believed that pangolins have the effect of "opening up", and when encountering diseases such as carbuncle sores, menstrual austure, milk failure and other diseases that need to be "passed", pangolins are unfortunate to lie guns.
According to Professor Wu Shibao of the School of Life Sciences of South China Normal University, China consumes about 300,000 pangolins every year, generally speaking, 150,000 for food and 150,000 for medicinal purposes, but in recent years, the proportion of eating has exceeded that of medicinal uses. More than 95% of the pangolins consumed domestically each year come from abroad.
In 2018 alone, a total of 38.14 tons of smuggled pangolin scales were seized by six customs in china, which means that about 60,000 pangolins were killed, most of them African pangolins.
And what about the native Chinese pangolin? On June 8, 2019, the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation announced the shocking news that the Chinese pangolin has been "functionally extinct" in Chinese mainland.
In fact, pangolins are just one of the unlucky one of many wild animals that are eaten by Chinese. In the past decade, the search popularity of various types of "wild game" on a search engine has ranked first for pangolins, second for porcupines, third for bamboo rats, and fourth for bats.
If you eat wild game, you will get sick
Eat wild game, what do you want?
Delicious? The boar smelled strongly, and the meat was old and hard. Isn't the pork its flesh fragrant?
Figure tonic? Pangolin scales accumulate toxic elements such as arsenic copper, what is the difference between taking calcined pangolin tablets and eating heavy metals?
The most deadly thing is that illegally smuggled wild animals have not undergone sanitary quarantine!
Love tonic with pangolins? Toxoplasma gondii and lung flukes on pangolins can cause myocarditis, pneumonia, and hepatitis.
Still using snakes to make wine? Snakes have whiplash tongue worms in the lungs and trachea, and xenobidischs in the gallbladder.
Think the groundhog is cute? It has plague bacteria in its body, which is the culprit that causes the plague.
Domestic pigs are not as fragrant as wild boars? Wild boars have a large number of ticks, and Brucella is very easy to transmit to humans, infected with relapsing fever and hemorrhagic fever.
Trying dolphin meat? Xenohalis enters the digestive tract, migrates to the brain and organs, and can survive for years, leading to epilepsy and even death.
Still want to eat monkey brain raw? AIDS, rabies, take people's lives at any time.
Civet hot pot? Have you heard of SARS...
Wild animals and human well water do not violate the river water, but once there is an intersection, it is often fatal. Let us enumerate the various infectious diseases that have been frightening in recent years.
SARS, Ebola, and Middle East respiratory syndrome are all suspected of originating in bats. There are 1,200 species of bats in the world, carrying a total of 3,204 coronavirus species. In this way, someone still wants to drink bat soup?
What is even more frightening is that many years have passed, and people's awareness of wild meat has not improved much, but the global population flow has greatly accelerated.
In the novel "Blood Plague - The Story of Ebola", it is written that between civilization and the virus, only one flight away, the dangerous virus from the rainforest can reach any city on the earth by plane within 24 hours. Isn't that a little scary?
The coexistence of humans, animals, and microorganisms in the world is a history of evolutionary struggles with each other.
Let wild animals have a way to live, and also give human beings a way to live.
All right?
This article is transferred from the Beijing News
Data News Editor: Meng Rong
Design: Jia Chenchen
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