SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Vampire bats may have earned their name, as the Smithsonian Channel describes them...
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: Vampire bats are the only bats in the world that feed on blood.
SIMON: Oh, my. Well, if that's not sinister enough, the diseases these bats carry, like rabies, can kill livestock and even humans. The bats have caused rabies outbreaks across their range from Mexico to Argentina, but a new study shows promise in a new method to try and vaccinate the animals, and it relies on a less scary part of vampire bat behavior. They're known to groom each other. Tonie Rocke led the research team. She's an epidemiologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center and joins us now for Madison, Wisconsin. Thanks very much for being with us.
TONIE ROCKE: I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: They groom each other?
ROCKE: Oh, yes, each other and themselves a lot, all the time. It's behavior that we can take advantage of in applying medicines - and vaccines, in particular.
SIMON: Well, tell us how that works.
ROCKE: Well, so currently, the way to manage rabies relies on something called a vampiricide. It's actually a poison that's applied topically. The bats are released, and they go back to their colony, and they groom each other, eat the poison, and they die. But unfortunately, this approach can sometimes exacerbate rabies because it causes the bats to disperse. Once bats start dying in their colony, they'll disperse and carry the rabies with them. So we're looking for a different approach. We'd use the same kind of method. We'd apply a vaccine topically, release the bats, and then they go again and lick each other and transfer vaccine instead of poison.
SIMON: (Laughter) This is going to sound awfully naive, but - what? - you train them? I mean, what...
ROCKE: No. There's no training them. We trap them, capture them, apply the material, and they just naturally go back to their colonies. And they want to get the material off of them as soon as they can. So they go back. They all lick each other and themselves, and they consume the material.
SIMON: And forgive me if this sounds insensitive, but why should we care about the survival of vampire bats?
ROCKE: It's not so much the survival of vampire bats that we're worried about. We're worried about transmission of rabies to cattle and to humans. And so if we vaccinate them, it improves their survival slightly, but more importantly, it stops transmission of the virus.
SIMON: Now, I gather this is what we call a preprint study because you haven't been peer reviewed yet. But can you tell us where your work goes from here?
ROCKE: Sure. So this study, in particular, was really describing the medium that we're going to use to apply the vaccine to the bats in. We've had to work on that a little while to make sure it's the right consistency, that it transfers to bats, that they'll eat it.
SIMON: I have to ask. When you talk about making certain that the bats will eat it, I mean, does this mean coming up with a nice flavor?
ROCKE: No. They just want to get it off of them. So it interferes with their flight and everything. So they'll lick anything, really, that you put on them. It's not - probably doesn't taste very good, to be honest.
SIMON: And what do you see as some of the implications of this study, if what you believe you've discovered is borne out?
ROCKE: Well, for one, this could be used to manage other diseases in bats, in particular, other zoonotic diseases that affect people.
SIMON: Well, the implications of this for other species also were quite good, aren't they?
ROCKE: Yes, because they transmit diseases to lots of other species, certainly rabies to other wildlife, but particularly livestock in Latin America.
SIMON: Research epidemiologist Tonie Rocke, who is with the U.S. Geological Survey. Thank you so much for being with us.
ROCKE: You're welcome. My pleasure.
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