Advocate

Unfortunately, the negative connotations do not end with the otherworldly as they also receive backlash from misguided medical paranoia.

There is no denying that Bats can serve as a reservoir of several pathogenic agents, such as Rabies virus, Ebola virus, Marburg viruses, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronaviruses, Bartonella sp., and Pasteurella sp., just to name some. But these Bat-associated infections can be attributed to the overlapping of Bat and human habitats, which is mostly due to the encroachment of human activity on wildlife territory, as explained by Nerino Allocati, A.G. Petrucci, G. Di Giovanni, and Michele Masulli in their 2016 article published in the journal Cell Death Discovery.