How bat health could be linked to human health

The recent rabies-related death in Ontario has raised concerns about human exposure, but an assistant professor at the University of Guelph says we can learn a lot from the health of bat populations.

"White-nose syndrome, unfortunately, has decimated populations of little brown bats," explained Quinn Webber, pointing to a poster of different bat species in his office.

Webber, who works in the integrative biology department and is also a behavioural ecologist, said the disease has devastated bat populations. It wakes the flying mammals from hibernation, causes them to waste valuable winter energy and, eventually, they starve to death.

A recent study from the U.S. suggests the loss of bats to white-nose syndrome could also be linked to the deaths of more than 1,000 human infants.

It attributes the deaths to higher pesticide use by farmers due to the declining bat population, since they are excellent at pest control.

But Webber urges caution when citing that study.

"I suppose in the United States, in the death registry, they only have information on whether the cause of death was external," Webber said. "So something like a car accident is internal, which could be anything else, including pesticide use."

Even so, Webber believes bat health and human health are fully connected. That's because bats live near the same spaces humans do, like sheds, garages and cabins.

"We actually come in contact with bats on a regular basis and it's not necessarily a bad thing," he said.

In fact, Webber suggests irregularities in bat populations could affect human populations too since we're interconnected.

"If bats get sick, there is always that scary possibility of a parasite or a pathogen being transmitted from a bat to a human,” he said. “That is possible.”

But even with the recent rabies scare, he said it shouldn't cause widespread panic.

"The number of bats in the population that are hosting rabies is actually quite low. It's typically less than one per cent for most species, and often even lower than that.”

Webber said it's also important to remember that bats don't want to come in contact with us – they'd prefer to keep to themselves.