The decimation of the Amazon due to increased logging, mining and road construction is causing vampire bats in Peru to feast more regularly on the blood of humans.
National Geographic has reported that as human population grows and local wildlife numbers decrease because of development throughout the region, vampire bats have no where else to turn but human blood. As a result, outbreaks of rabies are increasing, and it’s killing people in places where its occurrence has previously been rare.
The problem is most prevalent in Peru, where vampire bats are native and development is increasing at unprecedented levels. The leechlike flying mammals are already common in areas where agricultural development is high, and large colonies of bats thrive near cattle ranches. But despite the fact that rabies can be widespread among bats in these regions, few people are bitten here compared to the rates being seen in newly developed Amazonia.
The reason for the difference is probably that vampire bats prefer large, docile mammals like cattle. Where development is destroying the habitat of the animals that the bats prefer, such as in the Amazon, the bats must turn to the next best thing: people.
As stated by National Geographic Grantee Daniel Streicker: “Vampire bats are kind of the perfect storm of different ecological characteristics. On the one hand these bats are feeding on larger mammals which are susceptible to rabies and in order to feed on these animals, to drink their blood, they have to bite and biting is also the main route of transmission of the rabies virus.”
The classic form of rabies familiar to most people causes symptoms like increased aggression and foaming at the mouth. But the strain carried by vampire bats is markedly different than this. Known as paralytic rabies, it causes muscle weakness, extreme disorientation, numbness, and eventually paralysis and death.
More data needs to be collected before researchers can learn exactly how widespread the rabies virus is among vampire bat populations, and also so they can help predict where people are most at risk of contracting the disease and thus most in need of a vaccination. Though of course, so long as the native habitat of the bats and Amazonian wildlife continues to be altered, and as people persistantly encroach upon that land, unforeseen environmental consequences will be inevitable.
It should be noted that vampire bats don’t usually prefer to feast on humans– and, for the most part, they are entirely harmless creatures. Rabies infection among bat populations was likely rare before the introduction of cattle to Peru, and typically animals bitten by vampire bats suffer no harm or illness whatsoever.
If the winged mammals have a bad reputation, that reputation is only relevant where their habitat and behavior has been radically disturbed or altered.
Source: National Geographic
Image Credit: the biella on Flickr under a CC License
About Bryan Nelson
[...] a result, outbreaks of rabies are on the rise, killing people in places where the disease was rare. Ecolocalizer Originally reported on National Geographic with video here. Some possibly unrelated posts no [...]