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What many people find difficult these Corona days despite all the appeals, bats do voluntarily: they distance themselves from their fellows when sick.
Keep your distance to avoid infection – which is recommended in the corona pandemic, vampire bats also practice. Researchers at the Berlin Museum of Natural History and American colleagues found in a study that vampire bats with symptoms of the disease spend significantly less time around their counterparts than usual.
“Because diseased animals have less contact with their healthy congeners, a pathogen can spread more slowly,” said biologist and first author of the study, Simon Ripperger of the Museum of Natural History. “We suspect that keeping your distance is a natural reaction because the sick bats were lethargic and slept more.”
Otherwise very social animals
Vampire bats are generally very social animals. “They groom themselves and share their food,” said the researcher. In the case of disease, these interactions can be seen much less frequently. The behavior had previously been observed in captive bats.
Scientists have now also tested it in a field experiment in Belize. They captured 31 females from a group and administered a substance to half the animals that simulated a bacterial infection for six to twelve hours. The animals were equipped with novel proximity sensors and released into the wild. “The sensors register exactly to the second who is close to whom. In addition, it is possible to measure how close the animals are,” explained the biologist.
Findings valuable for research
“These in-house high-tech sensors open up completely new perspectives on the highly dynamic social behavior of these bats. Before it was unthinkable to conduct such experiments in the wild and simultaneously observe changes in the social network of an entire colony every second,” said the scientific. The 31-animal study does not allow for general statements about the mechanism of spread of pathogens in vampire bats, Ripperger said. The important thing is that technology can collect more valuable data than simple observation, which is difficult in nature anyway.
The method can also be used to simulate the spread of pathogens in other organisms. “This technology is very valuable for research,” Ripperger said. In the future, the data sets obtained could help gain new insights into the patterns and processes that underlie the spread of pathogens. The scientists have published their results in the journal “Behavioral Ecology”.
