It turns out that these two species and many others find a home in the same caves
Although it is clear that people become infected with the corona virus as with other diseases due to the invasion and destruction of pristine natural areas and due to customs and traditions of using and eating wild animal species, pangolins and bats are the two species that have been "accused" of transmitting the corona virus to humans, now following a study done in Gabon (center Africa) the "blame" can be attributed to these as well.
In the study it became clear that members of the giant pangolin species (Smutsia gigantea), share their lairs with bats and thus expose themselves to viruses that can pass to humans when the pangolins are slaughtered and sold in markets in Central Africa.
Even before the epidemic broke out and the pangolins were blamed, they were studied in a reserve in Gabon (Lope National Park). With the help of cameras and surveillance facilities, living dens that contain many tunnels and rooms were inspected.
The research team was not surprised to find other animals living together in dens, among them: porcupines, pythons (snakes), white-bellied pangolins (Phataginus tricuspis), badgers and other mammals. Everyone uses dens, but the surprise was to find in those dens colonies of three different species of bats that were hanging from the ceilings of the caves. Several colonies were discovered in tunnels 4 meters deep and 30 meters long. It turns out that being close to bats allows the transmission of viruses.
The head of the research team, Lehmann, said that the members of the research team who crawled in the dens, were aware of the danger of encountering snakes or badgers as well as the danger of entering a virus breeding ground.
In April of this year, a study conducted in the years 2009-2015 was published in "Nature" according to which three species of insectivorous bats that "live" in caves carry corona viruses that can be transmitted to humans. In Africa there are four pangolin species, three of which are common in Gabon. All four species are hunted and sold in markets as food, and the scales are smuggled to China for brewing traditional medicines. The hunter and the trade create an ideal situation for the transmission of diseases from wild animals to humans.
The giant pangolin is a protected animal in Gabon but is nevertheless hunted and sold in markets, while the other two species are not protected. Following the outbreak of the Corona virus, a blanket ban on hunting, trapping, trading and consumption of pangolins and bats was announced in Gabon, but the markets in Gabon are not alone. Pangolins are hunted and sold in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Ghana and other countries. The conditions in which the animals are slaughtered and sold are a breeding ground for outbreaks of epidemics that pass from animals (zoonotic).
It is to be hoped that one of the positive sides of the epidemic will be the reduction of harm to animals in the wild.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
3 תגובות
The article is fine except that a mantra is inserted again that repeats itself over and over again and this does not make the mantra correct...
"Because people get infected with Corona like other diseases because of the invasion and destruction of pristine natural areas" Really?
Man today is cut off from nature and lives more than ever, once people lived in nature there was no other place but nature
There is almost no centimeter in the world that a human foot has not stepped on throughout human existence, especially where there are animals because there the human could walk around and get food,
When man domesticated farm animals, they lived in close proximity to animals in a much closer way than is the case today in most of the world,
The primary reason we become vulnerable to a certain type of disease today is the huge amount of people living today and the amount of interactions and the high frequency of each other between people, and there are also other places where the interaction between animals and humans is more similar to what it once was, for example meat markets in China and farms that exist there,
Preserving nature is a first-rate value thing in my opinion I wish most of humanity would share this thing but even the cynics among us are those who don't care and there is quite a bit of accumulation in nature
of complexity of millions hundreds of millions and billions of years that can be erased in one moment of human stupidity
This complexity is knowledge from which we can learn and advance ourselves to other places
Some of this knowledge that exists in nature can only be learned if the right tools are developed before this, it is not possible to do so
So the disappearance of a specific species in nature is a disaster because when the tools with which we can research are developed there will no longer be anything to research,
It seems that it is important not to introduce the proper values of nature conservation through the back door in a way that is not logical
Because it's like a boomerang hitting the subject you want to keep,
Insect bats eat locusts - plague of Egyptians corresponding eighth Thou shalt not steal - speaking eighth.
It's Batman who put a curse on us, there's even a comic about it, look it up and see how it ends