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Chimps are now eating disease-ridden bat feces as over-farming wipes out food sources in Africa... and experts warn it could start next pandemic
Chimpanzees in a protected Ugandan forest are being forced to eat disease-ridden bat feces due to over-farming — and experts fear it could start the next pandemic.
Scientists observed chimps, monkeys, and antelopes consume the guano over the course of two years - the first time this has been observed in the wild.
Deforestation due to tobacco farming has wiped out one of the animals' normal food sources - the raffia palm.
Experts suspect they are now turning to bat poop because it is rich in calcium, magnesium, iron, and other essential nutrients that they used to get from the palms.
But bats are notorious for harboring diseases. An analysis of the guano by the team of researchers from the US, UK, and Uganda found it contained 27 different viruses, including one coronavirus, which were previously unknown to people.
These photos, taken by a motion-sensitive trail camera, captured the following: A) a guano pile at the opening of a tree where bats roost; B) chimpanzees eating guano; C) black-and-white colobus monkeys eating the guano; and D) a red duiker, a species of antelope, eating the guano.
It's not unusual for chimpanzees to supplement their diet with clay soil, as seen here. But clay does not contain nearly the amount of viruses that bat guano does.
Researchers are now concerned that all the animals could be carrying bat-borne diseases, which are what may have sparked devastating outbreaks like Ebola and SARS-CoV-2 that jumped from mammals to humans.
In a new study published in the journal Communications Biology, scientists showed that chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda are regularly eating bat guano.
From 2017 to 2019, the apes ate guano at least 92 times on 71 different days, cementing the first report of wild primates eating bat guano.
Black and white colobus monkeys also fed on the guano 65 times, and red duiker antelopes licked it 682 times.
When the team behind the research first saw chimps eating bat poo, they were horrified and concerned.
'Aside from the ick factor, we all had the exact same thought,' lead researcher Tony Goldberg, a veterinary epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, told Science.
Wild chimpanzees in a forest in Uganda have started to eat clay, apparently for the minerals it contains and to help combat toxins in their food.
'They must be exposed to horrible bat-borne viruses.'
This could be a major problem, said scientists.
This fear is based on the real history of infectious diseases like Ebola, SARS-CoV-2, and anthrax, which are all thought to have originated with bats.
Those diseases probably adapted to infect chimps or monkeys, and then infected the humans who came into contact with their carcasses, scientists suspect.
Before now, it was not clear how the bats infected whatever intermediary animal passed the diseases on to people.
But the new observations of chimps eating bat guano draw a straight line between the two animals.
By documenting this habit, the team has shown the world a 'totally underappreciated way' that new viruses can get from bats to other animals and potentially humans, said evolutionary biologist Pascal Gagneux, who was not involved in the study.
'These authors are documenting an utterly terrifying 'ecoquake,'' he said.
Guano is not a first-choice delicacy for the chimps.
Rather, they have been driven to it by human activities in and around their home.
Tobacco farming in Uganda has been a disaster for the chimps' usual diet, the raffia palm.
This feathery palm used to be the main source of many of the animals' essential minerals: calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, and phosphorous.
The apes would eat the inside of decaying raffia palm trunks to get these nutrients. They also do this with clay soil and termite mounds.
But local tobacco farmers use the fronds from the raffia palm to bundle up their crops, and by 2012 the tree was all but wiped out from Budongo Forest.
Clay is rich in essential micronutrients that chimps need to survive, and scientists have long known that the animals in Uganda eat it.
Bat guano has long been popular as a fertilizer because of its high nutrient content. But chimps are supplementing their diets with it now, too.
Not long after, researchers like Goldberg and his colleagues started seeing the chimps try bat guano, which they found piled at the entrance of hollowed out trees where bats roosted.
In the 60 years that scientists had been recording the apes' behavior, nobody had reported them doing this.
Goldberg and his team tested samples of the guano and found that it is rich in the same essential nutrients as clay and raffia palms are.
'The guano contained concentrations of potassium, magnesium, sodium and phosphorus equal to or in excess of concentrations in other dietary sources,' the team wrote in the study.