Nipah, Hendra, Ebola, Marburg, SARS.
These are some of the world's scariest viruses.
Hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola are extremely fatal — they kill up to 90 percent of people infected — while SARS, a coronavirus, has a lower mortality rate but spreads incredibly rapidly.
All of these nasty pathogens have surfaced in humans in just the last 50 years, and they are all carried by bats.
Which, to be clear, really isn't bats' fault: the recent rise in outbreaks is likely due to humans and our animals creeping ever-farther into bats' territory, especially in the tropics.
In Malaysia, for example, the spread of commercial pig farms into bat-inhabited forests led to the first human outbreak — via pigs — of Nipah.
And in Australia, human Hendra cases are cropping up as destruction of native forests forces fruit bats to feed in suburban gardens.
But still: bats do appear to carry more human-killing diseases than pretty much any other animal.
One big reason is that, with a few notable exceptions, bats love company — different kinds of bats often roost together in huge numbers and close quarters, which helps viruses spread not just between individuals, but also between species.
What's more, most infected bats don't die — they live pretty normal bat lives, flapping around and giving the viruses time to spread.
