Bats have long posed an immunological mystery: They can harbor viruses that cause severe diseases in other animals, including humans, yet they rarely show signs of illness. Now, scientists have discovered a big clue as to why that is.
Researchers uncovered an unusual feature of bat immunity that could help to explain how these mammals evade infections. Vesper bats, the world's largest family of bats, may possess two separate genetic systems for producing the building blocks of antibodies, the immune proteins that latch onto germs. This configuration has never been found before in mammals.
"It was really surprising," study co-author Hannah Frank, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Tulane University, told Live Science. "The only other vertebrates we see something similar in are fish."
The findings, published Wednesday (July 29) in the journal Science Advances, c...
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