‘Bat feast’ animal movies at African cave provide clues to how lethal viruses unfold

‘Bat feast’ animal movies at African cave provide clues to how lethal viruses unfold

By Edward Chen & Nature journal

When researchers in Uganda arrange digital camera traps to observe African leopards (Panthera pardus pardus) and noticed hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) in a nationwide park final yr, they’d no concept that they might document a lot extra than simply these animals. A number of of the traps, positioned outdoors a cave identified to host Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus), caught on video a large number of creatures feasting on the winged mammals. The bats are identified carriers of Marburg virus, which might switch into people and trigger a deadly haemorrhagic fever, so the footage affords real-time perception into how illness can unfold.

Scientists know that bats can transmit viruses to people both immediately, or by an intermediate animal, from forensic detective work and different research. The staff in Uganda thinks that is the primary time that potential intermediate animals have been caught on digital camera in a identified hotspot for Marburg virus, which is in the identical household as Ebola virus. “It’s definitely the primary in such a well-documented type,” says Gábor Kemenesi, a area virologist on the College of Pécs in Hungary, who was not concerned within the research.

The researchers, who printed their findings immediately within the journal Present Biology after posting them in a Zenodo preprint 10 months in the past, reported videoing 10 species scavenging on or catching bats at Python Collapse Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth Nationwide Park. They noticed blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis) dipping into the cavern to seize bats, a struggle between a topped eagle (Stephanoaetus coronatus) and a Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus) over two bats captured by the eagle, and a leopard standing virtually upright to snag bats from the cave. This may be the primary affirmation that leopards hunt stay bats. “It’s by no means been seen,” says research creator Alexander Braczkowski, who’s the scientific director of the Kyambura Lion Mission in Kampala. “Generally he would eat 30, 40 bats in an evening.”

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Harmful visits

Much more astounding is that the staff caught on video greater than 200 individuals — vacationers, trainees from a neighborhood wildlife institute and kids with college teams — approaching the cave throughout the four-month interval when the cameras have been energetic. Just one customer, a vacationer, wore a masks. That is regardless of warnings posted across the cave about Marburg virus, which has no confirmed remedy or vaccine.

“I used to be fairly shocked,” says Elke Mühlberger, a virologist at Boston College in Massachusetts. Contact with caves is the biggest identified contributor to people contracting Marburg virus. In keeping with an unpublished evaluation shared with Nature by Adam Hume, a virologist at Boston College, 43% of the 21 outbreaks of Marburg confirmed since 1967 have been related to visits to a cave. For 29% of the outbreaks, cave contact has been dominated out; the rest have unknown origins.

Bats in Python Cave have, the truth is, been linked on to outbreaks of Marburg. An outbreak in 2007 at Kitaka mine, 50 kilometres from the cave, was traced to bats that fly to the cave. And two vacationers who visited the collapse 2007 and 2008 turned contaminated. One among them died. There are conflicting accounts of whether or not each the vacationers went into the cave or merely peered into it; the surviving vacationer tells Nature that they went about 3 metres into the cave and “peered in for no less than half-hour.” Jonathan Towner, a viral ecologist on the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, who has visited and sampled the positioning extensively, says that they most likely got here into contact with bat faeces or urine because the animals flew.

Warning indicators

These incidents prompted the constructing of {a partially} enclosed viewing platform 30 metres from the cave entrance in 2011, and the location of warning indicators to maintain guests away. “From a tourism standpoint, you clearly don’t need your guests probably turning into contaminated,” says Trevor Shoemaker, an epidemiologist on the CDC who was stationed in Uganda throughout the building and consulted on the challenge.

And but, guests are overtly flouting the foundations and approaching to inside “a couple of metres,” says Braczkowski. This wasn’t apparent earlier than the staff arrange its digital camera traps, says Bosco Atukwatse, an ecologist with the Kyambura Lion Mission and an creator on the research. The realm seemed “actually undisturbed,” says Atukwatse, who has since knowledgeable park administration of the staff’s findings.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority, which manages Python Cave and its surrounding wildland, didn’t reply to Nature’s request for remark.

Seeing all of the animals on digital camera, and immediately piecing in Python Cave’s connection to Marburg virus historical past — “that was the holy crap second for the entire staff,” Braczkowski says. “It’s not only a bat roost.”

This text is reproduced with permission and was first printed on April 20, 2026.

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