{"id":11922,"date":"2026-04-29T19:47:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T00:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11922"},"modified":"2026-04-29T19:47:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T00:47:26","slug":"bats-might-be-the-next-bird-flu-wild-card-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/04\/29\/bats-might-be-the-next-bird-flu-wild-card-2\/","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.tapinto.net\/towns\/piscataway\/columns\/the-latest-from-science-news\/articles\/bats-might-be-the-next-bird-flu-wild-card\">TapInto<\/a> <strong>Vampire bats in Peru show signs of past H5N1 infection<\/strong>. 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&nbsp;<a target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"have been found carrying H5N1 antibodies, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2025.11.09.686930v1\">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&nbsp;<a target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"opportunities to mutate and evolve, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/vampire-bats-treadmills-metabolism\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"vampire bats, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">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. Bats are reservoir hosts for several pathogens that pose serious risks to humans. If multiple bat species are susceptible to H5N1, large colonies could act as reservoirs for the virus, says Gregory Gray, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who was not involved in either of the bat studies. And that could make the bats vectors for bird flu transmission to other animals or even humans, he says.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TapInto Vampire bats in Peru show signs of past H5N1 infection. 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&nbsp;have been found carrying H5N1 antibodies, indicating exposure to the virus, researchers report November 11 at bioRxiv.org. The finding [&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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avian-influenza"],"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\/11922","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=11922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11923,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11922\/revisions\/11923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}