Insect-Eating Bat May Be Origin of Ebola Outbreak, New Study Suggests
The first Ebola victim may have contracted the disease from small bats dwelling in a hollow tree.
While people in West Africa continue to die from Ebola, scientists are pondering a mystery that has eluded them since the first known outbreak of the virus among humans, in 1976: Where does this fearful bug hide when it’s not killing people?
A new hypothesis described Tuesday in EMBO Molecular Medicine presents an unexpected scenario of how Ebola 2014 may have gotten started. The study suggests that the virus may have passed into its first human victim, a child, from a small insect-eating bat, an animal so diminutive that it is hunted by children but not by adults.
Fruit bats, which are relatively large and meaty, have often been touted as suspects, but the virus’s reservoir host has never been
