Why Do Bats Cause So Many Virus Outbreaks?

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about why bats are the source of so many deadly virus outbreaks; and the surprisingly strong influence older siblings can have on their brothers and sisters — just in time for Siblings Day. Then, test your knowledge from this podcast with a Curiosity Challenge trivia game.

Why bats are the source of so many deadly virus outbreaks by Andrea Michelson

Coronavirus outbreak raises question: Why are bat viruses so deadly? (2020, February 11). University of California. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/coronavirus-outbreak-raises-question-why-are-bat-viruses-so-deadly
Brook, C. E., Boots, M., Chandran, K., Dobson, A. P., Drosten, C., Graham, A. L., Grenfell, B. T., Müller, M. A., Ng, M., Wang, L.-F., & van Leeuwen, A. (2020). Accelerated viral dynamics in bat cell lines, with implications for zoonotic emergence. ELife, 9. https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.48401
Xie, J., Li, Y., Shen, X., Goh, G., Zhu, Y., Cui, J., Wang, L.-F., Shi, Z.-L., & Zhou, P. (2018). Dampened STING-Dependent Interferon Activation in Bats. Cell Host & Microbe, 23(3), 297-301.e4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2018.01.006
How Do Bats Live With So Many Viruses? (2020, January 28). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/science/bats-coronavirus-Wuhan.html

Older Siblings Might Be More Influential to a Child Than Parents by Anna Todd

https://curiosity.com/topics/siblings-shape-our-close-relationships-curiosity

Hear the answers to today’s trivia questions in these episodes of Curiosity Daily:

Memory’s Role in Social Anxiety, The First Synthetic Self-Replicating Genome, and Penguins Can Call Underwater https://curiositydaily.com/memorys-role-in-social-anxiety-the-first-synthetic-self-replicating-genome-and-penguins-can-call-underwater/
Speed Listening’s Effects on Emotion, Surprising Differences Between White and Brown Rice, and Pi Almost Legally Changed to 3.2 https://curiositydaily.com/speed-listenings-effects-on-emotion-surprising-differences-between-white-and-brown-rice-and-pi-almost-legally-changed-to-3-2/
Dr. Amesh Adalja Explains Social Distancing for COVID-19, Birds Won’t Spread Fake News, and Using Auroras to Find Exoplanets https://curiositydaily.com/dr-amesh-adalja-explains-social-distancing-for-covid-19-birds-wont-spread-fake-news-and-using-auroras-to-find-exoplanets/

Pick up “Wanderers: A Novel” by Chuck Wendig on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Xvx20x

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Season's greetings. We're wrapping up the year with a look back at your favorite
0:04.8	episodes of 2020. Enjoy this Curiosity Daily Classic and stay subscribe for
0:09.8	brand new episodes starting January 1. We'll see you in 2021.
0:14.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity
0:20.3	dot com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer.
0:23.0	Today you learn about why bats are the source of so many deadly virus outbreaks
0:27.0	and the surprisingly strong influence older siblings can have on their brothers and sisters.
0:31.0	Then you can play along with a special
0:33.6	edition of the Curiosity Challenge to test your knowledge from this
0:36.7	podcast. Let's satisfy and challenge some curiosity. Bats have gotten a bad rap lately. They're the original hosts of many diseases that have plagued humanity, including SARS, MERS, Ebola, and now possibly COVID-19. But why do so many of these deadly outbreaks come from bats of all things?
0:57.0	A recent study from a team of researchers at UC Berkeley
1:00.0	found that the reason they're so good at spreading viruses, maybe because they're so good at fighting
1:05.3	them.
1:06.3	Bats are old pros when it comes to keeping their systems safe from harm.
1:10.8	The metabolic demands of flying are super high and all that exercise can lead to an accumulation of DNA damaging free radicals.
1:19.0	Damage DNA gets kicked out of its cell's nucleus and left to float around aimlessly, where it could cause harm.
1:26.0	At least, if it wasn't for some smart adaptations of the bat immune system.
1:31.0	In the blink of an eye, bats wall off their cells from potential intruders by releasing a molecule called Interferon Alpha,
1:38.0	which tells their immune cells to prepare to fight off an invader like a virus.
1:42.0	Some bats even have this defense switched on permanently,
1:46.0	which leaves their immune systems on high alert for their entire lives. Of course, if your immune system did this,
1:52.4	you'd be sick all the time.
	...

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