Marburg Virus in Bats

[NZcaver]

Last wendsday I was invited to join a scientist from the CDC at Fricks Cave. He was there to work out his techniques for counting bats during a flight. He was more or less reinventing the wheel so we recomended he contact BCI to refine his technique.

He was part of the team that found the virus in fruit bats in a cave in Uganda. Now that a host other than humans has been found for the virus work can start on devleoping a vacine.

Of course I can't remember his name. I just found this facinating.

[Tlaloc]

That's "Marburg". Bats are believed to be the hosts of a number of zoonotic viruses such as:

Marburg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_Virus

Ebola:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola

Nipah and Hendra:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipah_virus

and Menangle virus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menangle_virus

According to the above mentioned Wikipedia article about Henipaviruses:

The emergence of henipaviruses parallels the emergence of other zoonotic viruses in recent decades. SARS coronavirus, Australian bat lyssavirus, Menangle virus and probably Ebola virus and Marburg virus are also harboured(sic) by bats and are capable of infecting a variety of other species.