Deforestation pushes animals to eat virus-laden bat poo
By Wedaeli Chibelushi & Natasha Booty
Animals in a Ugandan forest have been eating bat poo laden with viruses after tobacco farming wiped out their usual food source, a study has found.
A virus linked to Covid-19 was among the 27 identified in the poo eaten by chimpanzees, antelopes and monkeys.
Researchers say this finding sheds light on how new viruses might spread from wildlife to humans.
The animals were monitored in a study by the University of Stirling and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The six-year project was prompted when Dr Pawel Fedurek from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Scotland’s University of Stirling observed wild chimpanzees in Budongo forest eating accumulated bat excrement, known as guano, from the hollow of a tree.
In July 2017, he set up cameras which captured other species also eating the poo.
According to the peer-reviewed study, which features in the Nature journal, guano is an “alternative source of crucial minerals” for the animals after the the palm trees they once consumed were “harvested to extinction”.
The trees were used by locals in Budongo to dry tobacco leaves, which were then sold to international companies.
