{"id":11000,"date":"2025-12-10T16:36:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T22:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11000"},"modified":"2025-12-10T19:35:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T01:35:26","slug":"bats-might-be-the-next-bird-flu-wild-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/12\/10\/bats-might-be-the-next-bird-flu-wild-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Bats might be the next bird flu wild card"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/vampire-bats-bird-flu-h5n1-virus\">Science News<\/a> Bats have become the latest mammals susceptible to H5N1, the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus responsible for bird flu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Peru, over a dozen vampire bats\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2025.11.09.686930v1\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"have been found carrying H5N1 antibodies, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">have been found carrying H5N1 antibodies<\/a>, indicating exposure to the virus, researchers report November 11 at bioRxiv.org. The finding is \u201cvery worrisome,\u201d says Vincent Munster, a virus ecologist at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont., who was not involved in the study. Each time the virus jumps to a new mammalian host, he says, it gains\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/genetic-analyses-h5n1-bird-flu-cows\">opportunities to mutate and evolve<\/a>, potentially bringing it closer to spreading among people. And\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/vampire-bats-treadmills-metabolism\">vampire bats<\/a>\u00a0may not be the only bat species at risk. Preliminary findings from Bangladesh indicate that 16 flying foxes, large fruit-eating bats with foxlike faces, appear to have died from bird flu, says Munster, who is investigating those deaths.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Science News Bats have become the latest mammals susceptible to H5N1, the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus responsible for bird flu. In Peru, over a dozen vampire bats\u00a0have been found carrying H5N1 antibodies, indicating exposure to the virus, researchers report November 11 at bioRxiv.org. The finding is \u201cvery worrisome,\u201d says Vincent Munster, a virus ecologist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avian-influenza","category-featured-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11001,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11000\/revisions\/11001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}