Chimpanzees in a protected Ugandan forest are being forced to eat disease-ridden bat feces due to overexploitation, and experts fear this could start the next pandemic.
Scientists observed that chimpanzees, monkeys and antelopes consumed guano for two years; This is the first time this has been observed in nature.
Deforestation caused by tobacco cultivation has destroyed one of the animals’ usual food sources: the raffia palm.
Experts suspect they are now turning to bat poop because it is rich in calcium, magnesium, iron and other essential nutrients they previously got from palms.
But bats are notorious for harboring diseases. An analysis of the guano by a team of researchers from the US, UK and Uganda found that it contained 27 different viruses, including a coronavirus, that until now were unknown to people.
These photographs, taken with a motion-sensitive trail camera, captured the following: A) a pile of guano in the opening of a tree where bats roost; B) chimpanzees eating guano; C) black and white colobus monkeys eating guano; and D) a red duiker, a species of antelope, which feeds on guano.
It is not uncommon for chimpanzees to supplement their diet with clay soil, as seen here. But clay does not contain the amount of viruses that bat guano does.
Researchers are now concerned that all animals could be carriers of bat-borne diseases, which may have caused devastating outbreaks like Ebola and SARS-CoV-2 that jumped from mammals to humans.
in a new study published in the magazine Communications BiologyScientists have shown that chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda regularly eat bat guano.
From 2017 to 2019, the apes ate guano at least 92 times on 71 different days, cementing the first report of wild primates eating bat guano.
Black and white colobus monkeys also fed on the guano 65 times, and red duiker antelopes licked it 682 times.
When the team behind the research first saw chimpanzees eating bat poop, they were horrified and worried.
“Other than the yuck factor, we all had the exact same thought,” said lead researcher Tony Goldberg, a veterinary epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Science.
“They must be exposed to horrible viruses transmitted by bats.”
This could be a major problem, the scientists said.
This fear is based on the true history of infectious diseases such as Ebola, SARS-CoV-2 and anthrax, which are believed to have originated in bats.
Scientists suspect those diseases probably adapted to infect chimpanzees or monkeys, and then infected humans who came into contact with their carcasses.
Until now, it was unclear how bats infected the intermediary animal that transmitted diseases to people.
But new observations of chimpanzees eating bat guano draw a straight line between the two animals.
By documenting this habit, the team has shown the world a “totally underestimated way” that new viruses can jump from bats to other animals and potentially to humans, said evolutionary biologist Pascal Gagneux, who was not involved in the study. .
“These authors are documenting an absolutely terrifying ‘eco-earthquake,'” he said.
Guano is not the favorite delicacy of chimpanzees.
Rather, they have been driven to it by human activities in and around their home.
Tobacco cultivation in Uganda has been a disaster for the chimpanzees’ usual diet, the raffia palm.
This feathery palm used to be the main source of many of the animals’ essential minerals: calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, sodium and phosphorus.
The apes ate the insides of decaying raffia palm trunks to obtain these nutrients. They also do it with clay soil and termite mounds.
But local tobacco farmers use the leaves of the raffia palm to bundle their crops, and in 2012 the tree virtually disappeared from the Budongo forest.
Clay is rich in essential micronutrients that chimpanzees need to survive, and scientists have long known that animals in Uganda eat it.
Bat guano has long been popular as a fertilizer due to its high nutrient content. But now chimpanzees are also supplementing their diet with it.
Not long after, researchers like Goldberg and his colleagues began watching chimpanzees taste bat guano, which they found piled up at the entrance to the hollowed-out trees where the bats slept.
In the 60 years that scientists had been recording ape behavior, no one had reported them doing this.
Goldberg and his team analyzed guano samples and found that it is rich in the same essential nutrients as clay and raffia.
“Guano contained concentrations of potassium, magnesium, sodium, and phosphorus equal to or greater than the concentrations of other dietary sources,” the team wrote in the study.