Posted on Feb 7, 2023
Hendra virus rarely spills from animals to us. Climate change makes it a bigger threat
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https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/11/16/ [login to see] /an-elegant-way-to-stop-deadly-hendra-virus-spillovers-from-bats-to-horses-to-us
Not quite 20 years ago, Raina Plowright stood in a forest in Australia's Northern Territory at dusk. She watched as hundreds of thousands of bats called little red flying foxes launched themselves into the air.
"The sky was [dark] with these huge bats taking off in this stream of animals across the landscape looking for nectar," Plowright says. "So just a deafening roar of bat sound, talking to each other, screeching at each other."
Plowright, a disease ecologist at Cornell University who studies pandemic prevention, was interested in bats because they carry a virus called Hendra. And while it's harmless to bats, they can pass it to horses through their feces and urine.
For equines it manifests as a nasty respiratory and neurological disease. They can develop a frothy nasal discharge, trouble breathing and odd behaviors, like drinking water constantly or throwing themselves against the wall of a stable. The virus kills three out of every four horses it infects. Over 100 horses have died from Hendra, though there are no known cases at the moment.
Not quite 20 years ago, Raina Plowright stood in a forest in Australia's Northern Territory at dusk. She watched as hundreds of thousands of bats called little red flying foxes launched themselves into the air.
"The sky was [dark] with these huge bats taking off in this stream of animals across the landscape looking for nectar," Plowright says. "So just a deafening roar of bat sound, talking to each other, screeching at each other."
Plowright, a disease ecologist at Cornell University who studies pandemic prevention, was interested in bats because they carry a virus called Hendra. And while it's harmless to bats, they can pass it to horses through their feces and urine.
For equines it manifests as a nasty respiratory and neurological disease. They can develop a frothy nasal discharge, trouble breathing and odd behaviors, like drinking water constantly or throwing themselves against the wall of a stable. The virus kills three out of every four horses it infects. Over 100 horses have died from Hendra, though there are no known cases at the moment.
Hendra virus rarely spills from animals to us. Climate change makes it a bigger threat
Posted from npr.org
Australia
Medical
Health
Wildlife
Climate Change
Posted >1 y ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Her mission: Find out what makes Hendra spill over
Hendra — named for a suburb of Brisbane, Australia where the virus once killed a number of racehorses — is what had brought Plowright to the country. She wanted to understand the conditions that made it more likely for the virus to move from bats into horses, an occurrence that's detected relatively rarely. If she could understand that, she figured she might be able to head off spillovers before they happened. (And she hopes that her findings might apply to other diseases besides Hendra. Bats harbor tons of viruses. For instance, many scientists agree that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over into humans from an animal, maybe a bat.)
The first step was for Plowright to capture little red flying foxes to see how many had the Hendra virus and how that number changed over time. Every three months, Plowright and her team would string up nets along the riverbanks for a two-week stretch, hoping to catch bats ... while keeping an eye out for crocodiles.
"The crocodiles are really smart," says Plowright. "They actually learn your behavior. So we'd have to move our nets every day so that the crocodiles wouldn't learn where we were. The viruses certainly weren't the most dangerous part of the work."
Once the bats were in hand, Plowright sampled their blood. "And what we noticed is there was usually very little virus," she says. "We often couldn't find any virus at all within the population."
That paucity of virus came as a surprise, given the sheer quantity of these thronging bats that could easily pass viruses among each other.
Then, in 2006, Plowright was out in Australia testing the bats again for Hendra virus. She'd even convinced a documentary team from National Geographic to come along to chronicle the dramatic swarms of bats in the sky. This time, however, she couldn't find any bats."...
..."Her mission: Find out what makes Hendra spill over
Hendra — named for a suburb of Brisbane, Australia where the virus once killed a number of racehorses — is what had brought Plowright to the country. She wanted to understand the conditions that made it more likely for the virus to move from bats into horses, an occurrence that's detected relatively rarely. If she could understand that, she figured she might be able to head off spillovers before they happened. (And she hopes that her findings might apply to other diseases besides Hendra. Bats harbor tons of viruses. For instance, many scientists agree that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over into humans from an animal, maybe a bat.)
The first step was for Plowright to capture little red flying foxes to see how many had the Hendra virus and how that number changed over time. Every three months, Plowright and her team would string up nets along the riverbanks for a two-week stretch, hoping to catch bats ... while keeping an eye out for crocodiles.
"The crocodiles are really smart," says Plowright. "They actually learn your behavior. So we'd have to move our nets every day so that the crocodiles wouldn't learn where we were. The viruses certainly weren't the most dangerous part of the work."
Once the bats were in hand, Plowright sampled their blood. "And what we noticed is there was usually very little virus," she says. "We often couldn't find any virus at all within the population."
That paucity of virus came as a surprise, given the sheer quantity of these thronging bats that could easily pass viruses among each other.
Then, in 2006, Plowright was out in Australia testing the bats again for Hendra virus. She'd even convinced a documentary team from National Geographic to come along to chronicle the dramatic swarms of bats in the sky. This time, however, she couldn't find any bats."...
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According to the Australian Government's Department of Planning and Environment (https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/), it's due to a lot more of the later. We humans are apparently kicking the urbanization of the outback into overdrive down there.
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