> What's the reason the lab is located in that city? Is there an underlying causal connection?
I thought so initially, but then:
1. look at the size of China; even assuming bats are found only in half of it, and maybe that Wuhan has more bats than other cities, that's still pretty fucking unlucky.
2. the bats in question are not from the same province anyway
> It came from a wet market for exotic meats. If it wasn’t a bat it was some other animal that was illegally trafficked and shouldn’t have been sold for consumption.
And this has what to do about making specific claims without evidence? With passing off sources as supporting your claims when they make no such claim?
Upvote for asking without animosity. I appreciate you.
Since you asked,
> Bats are a food source for humans in some areas. Bats are consumed in various amounts in Seychelles, Indonesia, Vietnam, Guam, and in some other Asian and Pacific Rim countries and cultures.[1][2][3] In Guam, Mariana fruit bats (Pteropus mariannus) are considered a delicacy,[4][5] and a flying fox bat species was made endangered due to being hunted there.[2]
> Hope you are not too attached to any of the following crops, which would die off without bats: cacao, peaches, bananas, guava, mango, dates, and figs.
Fruit bats and mosquito-eating bats are different bats.
> I hope this doesn't come across as inhumane, but hypothetically what would be the bio-diversity/eco-system impact of simply exterminating or at least curbing these huge bat colonies.
If you rationalize it like this, then why is it bad to slightly reduce human population?
>I guess as I understand it, it doesn’t matter if animals are normally friendly because rabies causes them to act aggressively.
I wrote a whole comment about bats being asymptomatic carriers, but Googling around the information is not clear. According to [1], bats have been shown to be symptomatic (and they die from rabies), but other bats of the same species remained asymptomatic (but still spread the disease).
At least it seems it's possible there were asymptomatic bats in their house.
> My favourite feature of theirs is that they take care of all the mosquitos so no need to buy or use repellent.
I am not so sure about that. I don’t think bats are either necessary or sufficient for effective malaria control. In parts of the world where there are bats, you still have a problem with mosquito borne illnesses such as malaria.
Large colonies under relatively exposed bridges are not likely an evolutionarily winning behavior in the long term even without an increase in extreme weather frequency.
Since there is a healthy bat population that otherwise survives well throughout Houston in trees, eaves and elsewhere, the loss of less robustly situated bats isn't going to make a large difference, in my layperson's point of view. There isn't a need to keep anything up because the bats do just fine without human interference.
> Were experimented animals not disposed of properly?
It's not inconceivable that a few of them ended up in the wildlife market. Great way for some low-level person in the lab to make a few bucks, and according to many people I know who have spent time in China the culture of "anything for a few bucks" is even more potent than it is in the USA.
I'm sure Chinese authorities are examining this possibility, but they would never talk about it as it would be embarrassing. If anyone is found to have done this they will be in deep ??.
> she really wanted to macerate a bat, to see how its wing looked on the inside. But that's not gonna happen because of the risk of rabies.
Err, depending on your location (in the US), there is a risk of raccoons carrying rabies as well. It's generally isolated to the east coast, but worth noting.
One theory is that people mine bat guano from caves, so there's no need for them to ever touch a dead bat.
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