The Ebola virus only occasionally spills over into humans from its reservoir host — but what is Ebola’s reservoir host?
Surveying wildlife in forests [near the borders of Liberia and Ivory Coast], the scientists found no evidence of a die-off among larger animals, such as duikers, monkeys, and chimpanzees, that are also susceptible to Ebola. This suggested that perhaps the virus had spilled over directly from its reservoir host into humans, without passing through other animals hunted or scavenged for food.
The team then focused on a village called Méliandou, in Guinea — the index village, where the human outbreak began. A young boy, Emile Ouamouno, was the earliest known victim. He died with Ebola-like symptoms in Méliandou back in December 2013, followed soon by his mother, sister, and grandmother. No adult males died in the first wave of the outbreak, another clue that seemed to point away from hunted wildlife as the origin of the virus.
During eight days in Méliandou, Leendertz’s team gathered testimony from survivors and collected samples, including blood and tissues from captured bats. From these data emerged the new hypothesis: Maybe the reservoir host was a bat, yes — but a very different sort of bat, in a different ecological relationship with humans.
While fruit bats are abundant in southeastern Guinea, they don’t roost in large aggregations near Méliandou. But the village did harbor a sizable number of small, insectivorous bats, which roosted under the roofs of houses and in natural recesses, such as hollow trees. The locals call them lolibelo.
“These bats are reportedly targeted by children,” the new paper recounts, “who regularly hunt and grill them over small fires.” Imagine a marshmallow roast, except the marshmallows are mouse-size bats devoured by protein-hungry children.
The researchers then uncovered another clue: a large hollow tree, which had recently been set afire, producing as it burned what someone recalled as “a rain of bats.” Leendertz’s team collected soil samples at the base of that tree, which eventually yielded traces of DNA assignable to Mops condylurus, commonly called the Angolan free-tailed bat.
That species matched the villagers’ descriptions of lolibelo. What’s more, the big hollow tree had reportedly been a favorite play spot for small children of the village, including the deceased little boy, despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that it was full of little bats.
Animals that cannot produce vitamin C in their own bodies. MOST species produce their own vitamin C but primates, bats and only several other species need that input from their diet to get the necessary vitamin C.