LOS BANOS, Philippines – Researchers wearing headlights and protective clothing rush to untangle the claws and wings of bats trapped in a large net after nightfall in the Philippine province of Laguna.
The small animals are carefully placed in tissue bags to be taken, measured and rubbed, with the recorded details and saliva and fecal matter collected for analysis before being returned to nature.
The researchers call themselves “virus hunters”, tasked with catching thousands of bats to develop a simulation model that they hope to help the world avoid a pandemic similar to COVID-19, which has killed nearly 2.8 million people.
The Japanese-funded model will be developed over the next three years by the University of the Philippines Los Banos, which hopes that bats will help predict the dynamics of a coronavirus by analyzing factors such as climate, temperature and ease of spread to humans included.
“What we are trying to investigate are other strains of coronavirus with the potential to reach humans,” said ecologist Phillip Alviola, the group’s leader, who has studied bat viruses for more than a decade.
“If we know the virus itself and where it came from, we will know how to isolate that virus geographically.”
In addition to laboratory work, the research requires long field trips, involving wandering for hours in the dense rainforest and precarious night hikes in mountains covered with rocks, tree roots, mud and moss.
The group also targets bat shelters in buildings, setting up fog nets before nightfall to catch bats and extract samples by torchlight.
Each bat is held firmly by the head as researchers insert small cotton swabs into their mouths and record their wingspan with plastic rulers, to try to see which of the more than 1,300 species and 20 bat families are most susceptible to infections and why.
DEVASTATING IMPACT
Researchers wear protective clothing, masks and gloves when in contact with bats, as a precaution against virus infection.
“It’s really scary these days,” said Edison Cosico, who is helping Alviola. “You never know if the bat is already a carrier.
“What we are looking for is to find out if there are more bat viruses that can be transmitted to humans. We will never know if the next one is like COVID. “
Most of those caught are horseshoe bats known to harbor coronaviruses, including the closest known relative to the new coronavirus.
Horseshoe bats appear in two of the scenarios of specialists of the World Health Organization that investigate the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.
Host species, such as bats, generally do not show symptoms of the pathogens, although they can be devastating if transmitted to humans or other animals.
Deadly viruses originating from bats include Ebola and other coronaviruses, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
Human exposure and closer interaction with wildlife meant that the risk of disease transmission was now greater than ever, said bat ecologist Kirk Taray.
“Having baseline data on the nature and occurrence of the potentially zoonotic virus in bats, we can somehow predict possible outbreaks.”