this is a bat that feeds exclusively on
blood as the name implies and the way
that that bat feeds is to make a
razor-sharp incision into the animal
that it’s feeding on and then it uses a
specially grooves tongue to lap up blood
that’s not it because these bats also
have anticoagulants in their saliva
which keep that blood flowing and after
they finish eating they can just hop up
into air which is really unusual for a
bad nose have to climb up onto something
so all of these traits make bats
incredibly good transmitters of rabies
virus arabia’s has been described in
ancient chinese and arabic text as an
incurable wound resulting from the bite
of a rabid animal that incurable part of
rabies is still true we still don’t have
a treatment for people once they start
to show signs of rabies even by the most
rudimentary standards that we have now
one person still dies a disease every 15
minutes and another 300 or exposed we’re
talking about 50 to 60,000 people dying
every year the natural response of the
people that are affected by this is to
kill bats the state-sanctioned way of
killing bats is using a poison called
them parricide where essentially a
poison is mixed together with Vaseline
and that spread on the back of a bat
they released that one it flies back to
its roost and the other ones groom it
off and just the poison and die sounds
straightforward enough unfortunately
there’s not really much evidence that
it’s doing anything to control rabies
one of the first questions that I wanted
to ask was why is it that this
conventional wisdom that the only good
bat is a dead bat isn’t actually doing
its purpose so one of the most I think
innovative and exciting ideas we’ve had
in the last really six months is whether
we can replace the poison that’s used in
the vent parricide with an oral rabies
vaccine in Peru we’re in a spectacular
situation to be able to try this we’ve
recently detected that they’re actually
traveling waves of rabies moving down
different valleys of the Andes so you
can actually see this on the map where
the dark points are the old babies cases
the light point to the new rabies cases
and we see them in a very step like
manner moving through these valleys that
is powerful that allows us to tell
farmers okay you’re going to have rabies
you don’t have it now but you
will in a month you will in six months
you will in a year that allows them to
make an informed decision about
vaccinations second this is a really
powerful experimental opportunity we can
consider this valley and there’s several
others like it we can consider these as
experimental replicas can we try
vaccinating at various stages in the
valley or across different valleys and
compare that with other types of
interventions and say what works what
doesn’t can we use science to figure
this out
you
blood as the name implies and the way
that that bat feeds is to make a
razor-sharp incision into the animal
that it’s feeding on and then it uses a
specially grooves tongue to lap up blood
that’s not it because these bats also
have anticoagulants in their saliva
which keep that blood flowing and after
they finish eating they can just hop up
into air which is really unusual for a
bad nose have to climb up onto something
so all of these traits make bats
incredibly good transmitters of rabies
virus arabia’s has been described in
ancient chinese and arabic text as an
incurable wound resulting from the bite
of a rabid animal that incurable part of
rabies is still true we still don’t have
a treatment for people once they start
to show signs of rabies even by the most
rudimentary standards that we have now
one person still dies a disease every 15
minutes and another 300 or exposed we’re
talking about 50 to 60,000 people dying
every year the natural response of the
people that are affected by this is to
kill bats the state-sanctioned way of
killing bats is using a poison called
them parricide where essentially a
poison is mixed together with Vaseline
and that spread on the back of a bat
they released that one it flies back to
its roost and the other ones groom it
off and just the poison and die sounds
straightforward enough unfortunately
there’s not really much evidence that
it’s doing anything to control rabies
one of the first questions that I wanted
to ask was why is it that this
conventional wisdom that the only good
bat is a dead bat isn’t actually doing
its purpose so one of the most I think
innovative and exciting ideas we’ve had
in the last really six months is whether
we can replace the poison that’s used in
the vent parricide with an oral rabies
vaccine in Peru we’re in a spectacular
situation to be able to try this we’ve
recently detected that they’re actually
traveling waves of rabies moving down
different valleys of the Andes so you
can actually see this on the map where
the dark points are the old babies cases
the light point to the new rabies cases
and we see them in a very step like
manner moving through these valleys that
is powerful that allows us to tell
farmers okay you’re going to have rabies
you don’t have it now but you
will in a month you will in six months
you will in a year that allows them to
make an informed decision about
vaccinations second this is a really
powerful experimental opportunity we can
consider this valley and there’s several
others like it we can consider these as
experimental replicas can we try
vaccinating at various stages in the
valley or across different valleys and
compare that with other types of
interventions and say what works what
doesn’t can we use science to figure
this out
you
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