Story at a glance
- Bats, like other animals, can naturally catch a pathogen and get sick.
- Researchers wanted to see how bats act in a colony when sick.
- The bats that were symptomatic from their immune systems being experimentally activated moved away from other bats in the group.
Bats harbor a lot of pathogens that don’t seem to cause disease, but sometimes they may encounter a pathogen that does get them sick. A team of researchers was curious about how they behave in relation to the larger group of bats in the colony when sick.
The researchers monitored and observed two colonies of bats. One was a captive population living in an enclosure and the other was a wild population in its natural environment. They injected a few individual bats in each group with bacteria-like protein to stimulate the immune system. They tested the bats for symptoms and found high fevers, fatigue and weight loss. The bats’ movements were tracked by GPS.
Turns out, the “sick” bats chose to stay away from the rest of the colony. In the enclosure, the “ill” bats would distance themselves from the others and those in the second group did the same while also staying in and not foraging for food for two nights.
The researchers think this change in behavior helps the bats conserve energy by avoiding energy-consuming social interactions and activities. The behavior may also be to protect the rest of the colony. Since the wild bats also didn’t go searching for food, this could also prevent the spread of the disease to other colonies.
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“The bats’ choice to stay away from the group is highly unusual for these animals. Normally these bats are extremely social creatures, living in caves in very crowded conditions,” says Maya Weinberg, who is a PhD student at Tel Aviv University and one of the authors of the study. “In fact, the ‘sick’ bats’ behavior is very reminiscent of our own during recovery from an illness. Just as we prefer to stay home quietly under the blanket when we are ill, sick bats, living in very crowded caves, also seek solitude and peace as they recuperate.”
Another point that the researchers made is that if the sick bats are staying in their caves, then they may not be sharing space with humans. “We observed that during illness bats choose to stay away from the colony and don’t leave the cave, and thus avoid mixing with other bats,” says Yossi Yovel. “This suggests that in order to encounter a sick bat, people must actually invade the bats’ natural environment or eliminate their habitats. In other words, if we protect them, they will also protect us.”
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