How does eating a bat give you a viral disease? How do you test to see if the disease came from the bat?

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How does eating a bat give you a viral disease? How do you test to see if the disease came from the bat?

In: Biology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Insofar as the first part of the question, the same way that eating raw eggs infected with salmonella or beef from a cow infected with mad-cow disease can make you sick, if you ingest something that can infect you, then you stand a good chance of contracting that illness.

There are tests that can be performed that can establish the possibility and support likelihood of infection from a particular animal, but I don’t know if testing to specifically prove it; it’s much like a criminal trial, wherein you make reasonable assumption and prove its likelihood beyond a reasonable doubt. (Btw this is why you always hear science talk referring to hypotheses and theories – for a scrupulous scientist to say “prove” really, really means something)

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