Bats Are Not The Threat That Many Believe

Halloween is a time of year when many of the rumors about bats hit their peak. They are labeled as blood sucking vampires out to spread rabies. Due to these rumors, they rely on us to set the facts straight.

With over 1300 bat species around the globe, only three species are vampire bats. But that does not make them blood sucking predators on the loose. All three species are found in Central and South America and lap (not suck) blood from cattle and poultry and it is rare for them to drink the blood of humans. But society tends to throw all bat species together in the same category of blood sucking creatures of the night.

There are many reasons the public fears and connects bats to vampires. Years ago most of this fear came from movies and comic books about Dracula or vampires. Today we also have the internet to blame for much of these damaging myths. It is impossible to stop the media from spreading this nonsense but we do have the right to boycott sites that promote it. We need to obtain our facts from credible websites and avoid social media or media websites. We need to also stop sharing this information on social media just because it is cute or part of folklore. They are part of the problem and are hurting bats!

Bats are a mammal and as with any mammal, they can have rabies. Every day new articles are posted about bats found with rabies. Most of these sites are from the media operated websites such as newspapers, television or other unreliable sites.  When we click on the link to read an article or open a web page, it is recorded in the statistics for that page. The media monitors these clicks or hits and they use it to determine what people are reading. They continue to print the popular or most visited articles. We can educate people on the truth without sharing these sites.

Society is concerned about bats with rabies so the internet continues to saturate it with articles after articles. This flood of articles about bats with rabies over other animals with rabies makes it sound like bats are nothing but rabies infected animals. As mentioned above, bats can carry rabies just like any other mammal but the surplus of articles does not truly represent the health status of bats.

According to the World Health Organization, domestic dogs are responsible for more rabies transmissions to humans in about 99% of the cases.

I have read on numerous websites that the CDC claims only 0.5% of bats have been reported to have rabies. I searched the CDC website repeatedly for this information but had no success locating it. I was able to locate information claiming 6% of bats have been reported with rabies. This is still a small number but I wanted to make sure I was getting the facts straight so I dropped an email to the CDC to clarify the numbers. I received this reply from the Poxvirus and Rabies Branch, Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology.

“Thank you for your inquiry. The true rate of rabies in bats is highly variable and dependent on numerous ecological factors. The variation in numbers you have pointed out below is also highly influenced by the method of surveillance used to detect rabies. The largest surveillance activity in the United States is referred to as “Passive Public Health Surveillance”. Under this system, only bats that have exposed a human or pet are eligible for testing. Each year around 25,000 bats are tested under this system, of which about 5 – 7% are positive. These are bats that have a much higher probability of having rabies due to their abnormally-acting behavior. It is an important population to test for the public’s health, but it is a very biased sample when compared to the full population of bats (normally and abnormally acting). There are several studies that have looked at rates of rabies in randomly sampled bat populations (healthy and abnormally acting) and these studies tend to find around 0.1% - 0.001% rates of rabies (so it is very uncommon in a random sample). The higher rates of rabies in bats that you mentioned are typically only seen when an outbreak has occurred in a colony. These events are very rarely detected through surveillance programs and are not representative of the “normal state” of a bat colony.

There is no universal truth to the rate of rabies in bats. It is highly variable based on numerous ecological factors and surveillance factors and rates change over time, even within a single colony. In general, the risk of rabies in a normal, healthy bat is quite low (but not 0), while the risk of rabies in an abnormally acting bat is quite high relative to the deadly nature of rabies. For this reason, persons should always avoid direct contact with bats unless using appropriate personal protective equipment; this is safest for the person and will prevent the unnecessary euthanasia and testing of that bat. "

Let's relax and enjoy all the benefits we have from bats as that truly outweighs all this propaganda we read on the internet.