According To The Podcast, What Animal Is Gomantong The Perfect Hideout For?

Each year thousands of people from effectually the world tour the Gomantong Cave in Borneo. Although scientists have institute a potentially dangerous virus in bats that roost in the cave, no one has ever gotten sick from a trip here. Razis Nasri hide caption

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Razis Nasri

Each year thousands of people from around the world tour the Gomantong Cave in Kalimantan. Although scientists have found a potentially dangerous virus in bats that roost in the cave, no one has e'er gotten sick from a trip here.

Razis Nasri

Welcome to the bat cave. No, we're non talking about the secret headquarters of a superhero.

This is Gomantong — an ancient cave carved out of 20 1000000-twelvemonth-old limestone in the middle of the Borneo rain forest in Malaysia. It'southward role of a vast network of tunnels and caverns. And it's the perfect hideout for bats.

Up at the top are millions of bats. Literally millions. They hang upside down all day long from the cave's ceiling, sleeping and pooping.

"Oh love! We've been dripped on," says Mike Lindley-Jones, a doctor from Commonwealth of australia, equally some liquid falls on his head. "Is this bat urine?"

"No, it's just water," says Jimmy Lee, with the U.S.-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.

Lee is guiding u.s.a. through the cave, along a wooden boardwalk. All of a sudden Lindley-Jones grabs the handrail covered in guano.

"Don't touch your confront!" Lee warns, because inside that bat excrement could be something potentially unsafe.

Carved out of limestone, the Gomantong Cave in Kalimantan looks like a 20-million-year-one-time cathedral. A hole in the top lets sunlight stream down 100 anxiety to the floor. Juan Carlos Munoz/Nature Picture Library/Getty Images hide caption

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Juan Carlos Munoz/Nature Picture Library/Getty Images

"That's why I'm wearing a mask," says disease ecologist Kevin Olival, who's too with EcoHealth Alliance.

We're all wearing masks. Because bats tend to carry lots of viruses. Some of them are harmful to u.s.a.. Bats are vital for keeping the rain forest alive — they are cardinal pollinators for more than 500 kinds of plants. But as people spread out around the globe, nosotros're increasingly coming into contact with bats — and the viruses they deport. Right here, we're using one of their favorite hideouts every bit a tourist attraction.

"Visiting beautiful places like this inspires people to protect tropical ecosystems and the species that live here," Olival says. "At the aforementioned fourth dimension, we need to recognize that there may exist potential health risks when people and wildlife come together, and that'due south why we're working to understand and limit those risks."

A few years agone, Olival, Lee and their colleagues went hunting for viruses around this cave, in partnership with the Sabah Wildlife Section and the Danau Girang Field Centre. And they couldn't believe what they establish.

"Nosotros plant 48 new viruses in the surrounding wood," Olival says, "including a virus related to SARS in bats that roost in the cave."

Olival and his colleagues don't know yet if these new viruses can infect people. They are related to viruses that do. Simply SARS-like viruses aren't something to mess effectually with.

In 2003, SARS scared the world. The deadly virus emerged in Red china and spread to Singapore and Hong Kong. So hopped on a aeroplane to Toronto and cities in the U.S. People panicked. They thought this was the big i — a pandemic that could kill millions. Luckily, health authorities stopped it in fourth dimension.

At present this SARS-like virus could be above our heads. Dripping from the walls. Even circulating through the air.

Playing the viral lottery

Wrinkle-lipped bats hang from the cave ceiling while swiftlet birds roost on the walls. With so many animals hanging out above visitors, in that location'southward a proficient run a risk of getting dripped on inside the cave. Auscape/Getty Images hibernate caption

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Auscape/Getty Images

Historically, it'southward been difficult for scientists to pinpoint where a mortiferous outbreak begins. For the recent Ebola outbreak in W Africa, the culprit was perchance a pigsty in a tree where toddlers liked to play and may have come into contact with infected bats. SARS very likely came from a civet cat, caged at a meat market.

Like these places, bat caves around the world have the two essential ingredients to brew up a new plague: intrusion of people into a previously hidden habitat and viruses circulating around.

In this instance, the Gomantong Cavern is an ecotourist hot spot. People come from all over the earth to come across the cave — and the orangutans and pygmy elephants in the surrounding rain wood. Tourism has helped protect this stretch of rain forest and these animals. If it weren't for tourism, in that location'southward a expert hazard much of this forest would've been cutting down and converted into palm oil plantations. One look at this surface area on Google Globe, and you'll see that at that place is just a narrow strip of woods left.

Bats aren't the only creatures in the Gomantong Cave. Swiftlet birds live on the walls. The birds' nests are a effeminateness added to soup in Southeast Asia, so people living near the caves harvest the nests several times a year. Charles Ryan hibernate caption

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Charles Ryan

The cavern also provides another source of income for families that alive nearby. Up high along the cavern's walls, swiftlet birds zoom in and out of their nests. The nests are fabricated from the birds' saliva and are a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. So each twelvemonth, men climb on rope ladders along the walls to collect the nests and sell them.

Below the birds and their nests, another creature reigns supreme.

"That wall is plastered with cockroaches," says Sammy Whitaker, a young boy from New Zealand, touring the cave with his parents.

Bat guano and bird feces coat the hand railing of the walkway in the Gomantong Cavern. For cockroaches, this concoction is a delicacy, but there's a tiny, tiny adventure a dangerous virus lurks within. Kevin Olival/Ecohealth Alliance hibernate caption

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Kevin Olival/Ecohealth Alliance

Cockroaches are everywhere in the cave. They're all over the floor. On our shoes. There are so many that we can even hear them.

Just the cockroaches aren't what worries scientists nearly the cave. It's what the critters are eating: bat poop.

In the heart of the cavern is a giant mount of bat guano. Information technology looks like blackness snow that's 8 to x feet deep. It smells awful, like moldy socks mixed with rotting cheese.

Dark, dank and secluded, the Gomantong Cave is a four-star hotel for bats. Millions of animals hang upside down from the cave's ceiling and poop on its flooring. That chocolate-brown pile in the foreground is a huge pile of bat guano — sometimes 8- to 10-feet deep. Charles Ryan hide caption

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Charles Ryan

And some of that guano might contain this new SARS-like virus, Olival says.

But the risk any one tourist faces is low. So depression, Olival says, that for a virus to infect a tourist, it would be like the virus winning the lottery. Merely some bats in the cave take the virus. So simply a few of the guano pellets are probable contaminated. And so, the tourist has to affect those contaminated pellets and rub his eyes or mouth to become infected. That's some other long shot.

But hither'due south thing virtually lotteries: In that location's always a winner. A big winner. Scientists worry information technology'southward the same thing with virus-filled bat caves.

"Information technology's a numbers game," Olival says.

Because there are then many bats in caves around the world and then many people now visiting them, eventually it'due south going to happen in some cave at some moment.

In fact, Olival says, it already has.

In 2007, a woman from Colorado took a trip to Uganda, where she visited a bat cavern, kind of similar the Gomantong Cave.

Out of the bat cavern! Every dark at sunset, millions of bats fly out of Gomantong Cavern to hunt in the surrounding forests. Past feasting on insects, the bats help keep pest populations nether command in the rain forest. Paul Williams/Nature Picture Library/Getty Images hide caption

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Paul Williams/Nature Picture show Library/Getty Images

A few days after she returned abode, she got very sick. Eventually the woman was diagnosed with Marburg virus — a close relative of Ebola.

She recovered. And scientists call up they know how she got the virus: She put her manus on rocks covered in bat guano.

Fortunately, the adult female didn't spread the disease to anyone else. Merely information technology could exist just a matter of time before another tourist does.

Tourism is one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. In 2015, people took more ane.ii billion international trips as tourists. Tourism helped Zika spread around the Americas and brought SARS to North America.

A risky cave gift

Just as we're leaving this cave in Borneo, we come across two more tourists — a male parent-son pair from the U.S., Anthony and Joe Caravello.

They've only finished the cavern tour, and Anthony notices something on his dad's hat.

"You've got a piece of guano on your lid," Anthony says. "Actually, you've got a few pieces."

"Only what I wanted," Joe says with a chuckle. "Maybe I could take information technology home and show it off." Considering soon Joe volition hop on a plane and head back abode to Florida.

Like most people touring the cavern, Joe wasn't told about the potential risk. Considering why scare away business organisation when the run a risk is infinitesimally small for any one tourist?

But eventually someone, somewhere, won't be then lucky. And the affect of that could be global.

What do you desire to know virtually pandemics? Share your questions here . Our global health squad will answer some of them in an upcoming story.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/02/21/508060742/the-next-pandemic-could-be-dripping-on-your-head

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