With the advance of deforestation in the tropical forests of Uganda, in eastern Africa, animals are running out of food – and, as a result, end up ingesting bat poop to survive. This is a problem because animal excrement harbors several types of viruses, some of which can be dangerous to mammals (including us humans).
The discovery was published in a recent article in the journal Communications Biology. The study was carried out by the University of Stirling, in Scotland, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the USA.
It all started when, in 2017, scientists observed that a chimpanzee in the Budongo forest in Uganda was consuming guano from a hole in a tree. “Guano” is the name given to the accumulation of birds or bats – as in the episode that occurred in Uganda.
They then placed cameras in wild forests to see if the behavior was common. And they discovered that they did: over three years of recordings, more chimpanzees, other species of monkeys and also antelopes were recorded consuming guano.
The researchers explain that the behavior is probably linked to the region’s growing deforestation – local forests have been shrinking in recent years due to tobacco plantations.
With less forest, it becomes more difficult for animals to be able to complete their normal diet, mainly composed of palm trees (especially the species Raphia farinifera). They then resort to consuming accumulated bat poop, which contains minerals and nutrients crucial for the animals’ survival.
The big problem with this: bat feces are full of viruses. Greater contact between wild animals and these pathogens, then, increases the chances of a microorganism adapting, starting to infect mammals such as chimpanzees and, thus, “jumping” to humans, causing diseases.
The researchers then collected samples of the local guano to analyze in the laboratory – and discovered that 27 different viruses were present there, all new to science. Among them, there was even a betacoronavirus – from the same genus of virus as Sars-Cov-2, the one that causes Covid-19.
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Although the origins of Covid are still not entirely clear, it is believed that the virus jumped from humans to bats, possibly with an intermediary. It is not known whether the betacoronavirus found in Ugandan guano is capable of infecting humans – but even so, the fact that there is a “relative” of Sars-Cov-2 having contact with chimpanzees is alarming.
The research reinforces a fact already known by science: deforestation is a major risk factor for public health, as it increases human contact, directly or indirectly, with wild animals and, consequently, with new pathogens capable of generating unprecedented diseases. Another example that came to us via contact with other species was Ebola, a very lethal virus.
“Studies like ours shed light on the triggers and pathways of virus transmission from wildlife to other wildlife and then to humans, ultimately improving our abilities to prevent outbreaks and pandemics in the future.” said Pawel Fedurek, a researcher at the University of Stirling and one of the study’s authors.
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