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The Dangers Associated With Bats And How They Can Impact Your Health

Bats are widely-known by most people to be the carriers of disease and all kinds of nasty maladies. Not only do bats scare many people, but they also have the potential to kill them through their diseases they carry. With the wide variety of diseases bats carry and how they can affect your health, it is important to exercise caution around these creatures. Continue reading to find out more about dangers associated with bats and how they can impact your health.

Transmission Methods

Before diving into the variety of zoonotic diseases bats carry, it is important to understand how these diseases can be spread to humans. A zoonotic disease is simply a viral or bacterial infection passed to a human by an animal. The best-known transmission method is through a direct bite, where the bat literally bites a human. Click here to learn what to do if you are bit by a bat. Another common transmission method is through contact with a contaminated surface. This can occur from bat saliva, bat urine, or bat feces. Once a human contacts that surface, it will somehow get into their system and cause them to contract the illness. A final transmission method is food contamination. Food contamination is where the bat will have left its saliva or any other part of its body within a food material that the human consumes. Each one of these transmission methods is severe and should be paid a great deal of attention to.

Rabies

Rabies is usually the most commonly thought of disease that bats spread to humans. Rabies is a very serious virus that can eventually kill a human if left untreated. Bats generally spread rabies through direct bites to humans. Once the human contracts this virus, the virus has to make its way into a human’s brain, where it will begin to cause problems. The symptoms a human will get in the beginning are common symptoms of many illnesses. Headaches, weakness, fever, and discomfort are all common. When the virus progresses, eventually you may begin to feel confusion, agitation, and even potential delirium and a fear of water. Once it hits this point, it is unlikely for humans to survive. If you have reason to believe you came into contact with a bat or any other animal and were bitten or scratched, it is very wise to get checked out as soon as possible. You can learn more about rabid bats and common bat species here.

Histoplasmosis

This nasty fungal infection is spread primarily by bats and birds. The most common transmission method for histoplasmosis spread by bats is by a human coming into contact with the bat’s feces that contain the histoplasmosis fungus within it. This fungus is generally inhaled in an area where bat feces are present. Once contracted, humans will potentially have a fever, cough, chills, chest pain, body aches, fatigue, and a headache. Histoplasmosis can have a mild or severe effect on humans, varying wildly. Once a human is diagnosed with this infection, they can begin taking antifungal medications that will help them recover.

Bat Bites

This last section is general because there are many diseases that can be spread through bat bites. A few of the most common will be covered. In addition to rabies, another serious infection caused by bat bites is Ebola. While it is rare that a bat would be carrying Ebola anywhere but in Africa, it is a possibility. Ebola is a highly deadly disease that kills over half of the people it infects. In addition to rabies and Ebola, bat bites can spread even the more simple diseases and bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella. There have been studies that show that over 60 different diseases are carried by bats at any given time, making them a very dangerous creature to live around.


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The Dangers Associated With Bats And How They Can Impact Your Health

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