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Return to frontpage What is the connection between fruit bats and Nipah virus?
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SCI-TECH HEALTH
The Hindu Explains: From fruit bats-Nipah link to monsoon onset
What is the connection between fruit bats and Nipah virus?
Priyanka Pulla MAY 26, 2018 19:48 IST
UPDATED: MAY 26, 2018 21:16 IST
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A Rodrigues Fruit Bat.
A Rodrigues Fruit Bat. | Photo Credit: AFP

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The Hindu Explains
Nipah Virus
What is it?
As the name suggests, fruit bats, or Pteropodidae, are a bat family that eats fruit. Since the Nipah virus broke out in Kozhikode, Kerala, fruit bats have attracted attention as the wildlife reservoir for the virus. This means the virus survives in the bat’s body without causing disease, allowing it to jump to susceptible mammals like humans or pigs, when bats come in contact with them. Such contact is becoming increasingly frequent as agriculture and urbanisation destroy bat habitats, forcing them into human dwellings. In the world’s first Nipah outbreak, which occurred in 1998 in Malaysia, virologists isolated the virus from the urine of the Island Flying Fox, a fruit bat species. In Bangladeshi outbreaks, researchers found antibodies to Nipah in the Indian flying fox.

This is why, when a bat colony was spotted in a well at the home of Kozhikode’s first Nipah victim, virologists zeroed in on these mammals as a possible source of infection. However, things have not been as straightforward as expected. When animal husbandry officials collected bats from the well, they only found the insect-eating kind, which belong to a different family. There is some evidence that insectivorous bats can host Nipah, but they have not been connected with human infections so far, says Jonathan Epstein, an epidemiologist studying the virus at the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance. So, Kerala’s animal husbandry officials are scanning the region for other fruit bats in the hope of finding the wildlife reservoir.
Why does it matter?

Identifying the source of the Nipah infection will help prevent future spread. In the Kozhikode epidemic, the virus seems to have moved from bats to humans in one “spillover” event. After this, it moved from one human to another.