Submitted by suckmymastercylinder t3_11d4qao in askscience
PHealthy t1_ja8fy3d wrote
Given the immune environment of bats, it's thought that most hemorrhagic fevers are evolved from them.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03128-0
There has certainly been a lot of press around Kitum cave but there are earlier recorded outbreaks and the pinpoint origin really can't be said definitively since viral studies were pretty cutting edge 50 years ago.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4166725/
https://academic.oup.com/trstmh/article/109/6/366/2461644
Of course, just saying it likely originated from bats doesn't really give the whole current story, there are many mammals that are thought to act as reservoir species so the cat is out of the bag...
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1172705?url_ver=Z39.88-2003
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0004815
Took a little digging but Dorothy Tovar provided some great bat facts in this COVID AMA:
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/ezstsw/science_discussion_series_the_novel_coronavirus/
angradillo t1_ja94310 wrote
What's your opinion re: Kitum cave on the exposures to Marburg and Ebola Zaire?
The studies I'm aware of mostly discuss the area northwest of Lake Victoria.
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