[HN Gopher] Rats filmed snatching bats from air
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Rats filmed snatching bats from air
Author : XzetaU8
Score : 108 points
Date : 2025-10-28 08:29 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| shaneofalltrad wrote:
| Rats are extremely predatory, I once as a kid worked at a Reptile
| importer and a handful of rats escaped, they destroyed the mice
| from under their screen/grated cages. Almost as traumatic as when
| I learned how to dispatch an adult rat on the side of the table
| before feeding it off to the reptiles at 15 years old.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Hm, maybe I should get some rats to keep the mice out of my
| house. Of course then I'd have rats.
| ipaddr wrote:
| If you have mice you won't have rats. Mice can be a positive
| sign.
| delichon wrote:
| I have both. I've trapped both in the same trap on the same
| night.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Get yourself a nice black rat snake. (Unironically, it drives
| me up a wall when I hear about people trying to exterminate
| snakes and spiders; the only reason those are around is
| because their food is.)
| chairmansteve wrote:
| I have a black widow problem. Their food is flying
| insects.... Any tips?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I wouldn't worry about them. A few thousand people get
| bit by them every year but there hasn't been a fatality
| in decades. They're very unlikely to bite and very
| unlikely to cause any harm at all even if they do bite.
|
| Maybe get some sticky fly paper though.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| What eats them? (Really, from a distance they seem
| unbeatable.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Wasps
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > the only reason those are around is because their food is
|
| For some reason everybody in my city is proudly boasting
| bout the recent large capybara population... And again, for
| some reason those same people didn't react well when
| jaguars decided to show up in the urban area.
|
| People are stupid.
| zdragnar wrote:
| We have all of the above and more. Alas, my wife is more
| afraid of our rat and pine snakes than she is of mice and
| rats.
|
| Fortunately, the pine snakes only try to move into our
| house and sheds once or twice a year or so.
| wiether wrote:
| Next step: get some turtles!
| 3rodents wrote:
| Rats are not predatory, they're resourceful. You didn't witness
| what rats do in the wild, you witnessed abused rats doing
| whatever they could to survive. Rats will eat mice if they need
| to but they will not seek them out when other food sources are
| available. You can't judge the behavior of rodents when they
| are feeders. Mice would do the same thing. As would you and I.
| threatofrain wrote:
| But then we see the rats hunting bats...
| whatever1 wrote:
| How do I know this is not Sora?
| tomrod wrote:
| Sora is too smooth
| skylurk wrote:
| One angle could be to consider it from a game theory
| perspective.
|
| Is this the sort of organisation that would be negatively
| impacted by publishing unverified stories?
|
| If so, what is the likelihood that the content is just Sora?
| puttycat wrote:
| Game theory or Bayesian inference?
| skylurk wrote:
| I'm an expert in neither, but I would say both?
|
| I thought of game theory initially because I framed the
| situation as a repeated game, where every article published
| is a new round.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeated_game
|
| But then I went and muddied it with the word "likelihood"
| :)
| hyghjiyhu wrote:
| This is an important analysis to perform but it's far from a
| sure thing. Motives can be murky and hard to assess. Maybe
| there is one particular scientist that has a baby on the way
| and fears he is about to be laid off unless he can get a
| sensational article published asap. A little helping hand
| from ai could be just the thing, and it's based on a true
| story just touched up a little bit and besides it's not like
| the readers will suffer any real harm from this tiny little
| transgression. Just one little shortcut one little time off
| course after that it's right back to honest science.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Chain of reputation. If you can trace back the claim to a
| person or persons who have reputation to stake on this, then
| it's unlikely to be completely fabricated.
|
| There are tech-related ways to tell _for now_ but eventually it
| 's going to come back to this.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Chain of reputation. If you can trace back the claim to a
| person or persons who have reputation to stake on this, then
| it's unlikely to be completely fabricated.
|
| AKA "Provenance" but digital, for those who want to look at
| existing methodologies.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provenance
| skylurk wrote:
| Additionally, in a very concrete technical sense, "whatever1"
| must rely on the "chain of reputation" of the https
| certificate system to have confidence that what they saw is
| not sora.
| ceroxylon wrote:
| It is good to be skeptical, but there is a large amount of
| detail in the paper itself that would have taken quite a bit of
| effort to fabricate (for no good reason):
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235198942...
|
| There is enough detail there to book a trip to Germany and set
| up infrared cameras if we are so inclined, repeatability is a
| large part of science.
| pizzly wrote:
| Because the person filming it brought the camera with approved
| government ID. Got their camera serial number recorded in the
| government database. The camera then embeds its serial number
| into the video using hidden watermarks. Just Joking .... for
| now.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| If you like the idea of vicious rats, read British horror writer
| James Herbert's The Rats.
| nortlov wrote:
| Two thoughts come to mind:
|
| - the rats are effectively as blind as the bat in the dark, are
| they relying purely on sound and air currents to gauge their
| attack?
|
| - and what a fantastic new path for pathogen transmission.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > the rats are effectively as blind as the bat in the dark
|
| Are they? Aren't rats nocturnal in the first place, meaning
| evolution should have given them some benefit in that
| environment? AFAIK, rats have pretty OK contrast/motion
| detection even in low light situations.
|
| I guess if "in the dark" means "low light" or "total darkness".
| You're probably right for "total darkness" but if it's "low
| light", I think the rats would "see" better than the bats.
| nortlov wrote:
| You might be right. The paper mentioned the rats preferred
| hunting near the light barrier but also mentioned they
| probably climbed the fabric for an aerial advantage (they
| didn't seem to prefer hunting near the light barrier once the
| fabric was removed).
| neom wrote:
| That's right, rats eyes are mostly rod based, they are very
| optimized for contrast shifts in extremely low light.
| They're also mostly colour blind.
| vasco wrote:
| > and what a fantastic new path for pathogen transmission
|
| Presumably it's been there for a long time and we just noticed.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| >Presumably it's been there for a long time and we just
| noticed.
|
| As a previous commenter noted, rats are an invasive species
| in the expanding human/wildland interface. So they will be
| encountering novel bat viruses.
|
| There may be other existing bat to human transmission paths,
| but maybe not....
| spankibalt wrote:
| > "Presumably it's been there for a long time and we just
| noticed."
|
| We just noticed _bat snatching_. I doubt it 's new discovery
| that rats also eat bats whenever the opportunity comes
| knocking.
|
| Also: Bats -> rats -> (house) cats -> humans.
| neom wrote:
| I don't see how a new path for pathogen transmission is
| available?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Not necessarily a new path, but a previously unknown path.
| Any place that bats directly interact with 'land mammals'
| leads to a mess of viral recombination and reassortment...
| hence why the agriculture/wild interface in China is the site
| of so many spillovers. Rats especially carry similar viruses
| with many features that increase tropism, so the fact that
| rats are feeding on bats means we're going to get a ton of
| crossover viruses especially well suited for transmission in
| mammals.
|
| One such study's key paragraph...
|
| > _While uncommon for coronaviruses of bats, furin cleavage
| sites are commonly found in coronaviruses of rodents and it
| is perhaps fitting to note that proteolytic processing of the
| coronavirus spike protein was first recognized in the model
| rodent coronavirus, murine hepatitis virus, MHV-A59 [53],
| with later analyses demonstrating the importance of furin for
| the proteolytic cleavage and function of its spike protein
| [54]._
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235277142.
| ..
| neom wrote:
| I don't think that is possible in practice? Rats and Bats
| diverged some 60 million years ago, they're far too host
| specific for anything new, and they have the same
| coevolution as bats to paramyxo and coronaviruses, I would
| presume that makes them immunologically resistant and
| ecologically poor hosts for any strains.
|
| Edit, in fact the paper you link says exactly what I said I
| think? Rodent coronaviruses already evolved to use furin
| long ago. I think this paper just makes it even less likely
| tbh.
| firstplacelast wrote:
| Might be wrong about this, but being so far removed and
| seemingly immunologically resistant is exactly what makes
| it a dangerous combination. Viruses mutate and recombine
| at an astonishing rate, so 99.9999% (?) of viral entities
| won't be able to make the jump between these species, but
| the one that can might have devastating consequences as
| it will be wildly different from anything that has
| infected rats before (and from there it's more likely to
| infect other mammal populations).
|
| The more exposure between these populations the higher
| the likelihood that a crossover event occurs.
| neom wrote:
| high mutation rate != high crossover rate, and
| immunological resistance != susceptibility to novel
| evolution. (it's actually the other way around)
|
| Also to be super clear, I'm not saying rats are immune to
| bat viruses, I'm just saying in reality it's is too
| divergent for functional crossspecies transmission and
| both rats and bats already have their own established,
| evolved coronavirus ecosystems that solve the same
| problems (like furin cleavage above). It seems to me near
| impossible it could actually happen.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's incredibly common for bats and rats to be coinfected
| with the same viruses... this is literally why we were
| looking at pangolins and raccoon dogs and mink for SC2
| and at masked palm civets and ferrets for SC1. The term
| of art here is "intermediate host".
|
| The virus doesn't need to make the animal sick to
| increase its human transmission risk, it just needs to
| infect its cells and be in the same host as other
| circulating viruses to get the crossover and
| recombination events.
|
| From early host analysis,
|
| > _For a precursor virus to acquire the genomic features
| suitable for human ACE2 receptor binding, an animal host
| would likely have to have a high population density to
| allow natural selection to proceed efficiently (27). It
| is interesting to note that rodent betacoronaviruses have
| the polybasic cleavage site (38). Considering the above,
| surveillance and whole genomic analysis of CoVs from
| rodents are important to elucidate whether these species
| have any role in the transmission cycle of the virus and
| to detect the emergence of possible recombinants
| involving CoVs from these species and those from bats.
| However, there is not yet any evidence on the role of
| rodents or squirrels as intermediate hosts._
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7297130/
|
| Or more direct examination of the FCS issue between rats
| and bats:
|
| > _Here, we examine the spike protein across
| coronaviruses identified in both bat and rodent species
| and address the role of furin as an activating protease.
| Utilizing two publicly available furin prediction
| algorithms (ProP and PiTou) and based on spike sequences
| reported in GenBank, we show that the S1 /S2 furin
| cleavage site is typically not present in bat virus spike
| proteins but is common in rodent-associated sequences,
| and suggest this may have implications for zoonotic
| transfer. We provide a phylogenetic history of the
| Embecoviruses (betacoronavirus lineage 2a), including
| context for the use of furin as an activating protease
| for the viral spike protein. From a One Health
| perspective, continued rodent surveillance should be an
| important consideration in uncovering novel circulating
| coronaviruses._
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235277
| 142...
| neom wrote:
| Too much conflation going on at this point, feels like
| we're getting to the point of talking past each other. My
| understanding is: crossspecies jumps need cellular
| compatibility, not just proximity. Resistance makes a
| host a dead end, not a mixing vessel. "Intermediate host"
| means one the virus can actually replicate in, not just
| be near. And parallel evolution isn't the same thing as
| recombination.
| echelon wrote:
| Bats are one of the largest disease reservoirs on the planet
| for all kinds nasty novel viruses that could potentially jump
| to humans.
|
| Bats have crazy immune systems that let them harbor all kinds
| of nasty stuff without it killing them on account of their
| unclean communal living habitat. Bats are in close contact
| where waste and bodily fluids are constantly coming into
| contact with other members, and these all carry pathogens.
|
| Bat immune systems evolved as a defense mechanism. Bat viral
| loads are high, and the viruses get to evolve rapidly, come
| into contact with other virus genomes, and essentially
| explore the state space of potential virus genomes quickly.
| Constantly evolving novel glycoproteins, etc. Bats are
| essentially a virus optimization battleground.
|
| These rats are an invasive species (to the cave) that also
| live in close proximity to humans. They've just been
| discovered hunting bats, meaning they're coming into close
| contact with bat viruses and potentially serving to introduce
| these into rat and, possibly subsequently, human populations.
|
| Additionally, if the viruses can jump to rats, they're in a
| state where they could already be primed to infect us.
|
| Bat viruses are no joke. Since our immune systems aren't
| familiar with novel viruses, and the viruses aren't adapted
| to not kill their human hosts at first, novel bat viruses can
| do a lot of harm.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Are bat reservoirs an interesting way to study novel virus
| especially for easy preemptive discovery of anti-virus?
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Last week I saw a couple of small hawks attacking a bat swarm
| as they came out of their cave at sunset. Less of a
| transmission vector probably, but there seems to be a lot
| more interaction between bats and other animals than I
| thought. I wonder if domestic cats attack bats.
| riversflow wrote:
| > I wonder if domestic cats attack bats.
|
| I have no doubt. Cats have an _incredible_ prey drive, and
| it would be down right batty for them to have some sort of
| hardwiring to avoid bats when they happily attack moths who
| have a similar flight pattern. I haven't personally seen
| one catch a bat, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. A
| cursory search says indicates it happens.
|
| Although for whatever reason I would be more concerned
| about a dog finding, rubbing in and eating a dead bat. I
| mean I don't know what percentage of bats die while out,
| but it can't be zero, and dogs--especially spitz-types--are
| remarkable at finding dead animals. Now that I think of it,
| I could easily imagine a person getting direct exposure to
| diseased bat remains through that vector. People typically
| put their hands on the shoulders of dogs and think little
| of it.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X652RJtSWs8
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > - and what a fantastic new path for pathogen transmission.
|
| on the bright side and if history is of any help, as long as
| future-to-be-debarred "experts" aren't doing gain-of-function
| research on bat viruses while lying about it, we don't have
| much to fear.
|
| Official US Congress report, mandated under Biden and whose
| results came under Biden, says the virus has "characteristic
| not found in nature" and that a lab-leak is the most likely
| source:
|
| https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec...
|
| And Peter Daszak has been debarred, defunded and prevented from
| ever receiving funding from the US again.
|
| I'm more worried about humans lying and humans siding with
| lying humans to then lie some more, worldwide, to the public
| --for years before the truth finally came up to light-- much
| more than I'm about rats attacking bats.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| >on the bright side
|
| I wouldn't be so confident. HIV and Ebola came from the wild.
| Bird Flu also has the potential to be really bad.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > mandated under Biden and whose results came under Biden
|
| You missed the part where the original mandate was along
| party lines with Democrats supporting it and Republicans not,
| to investigate how the Trump administration handled the
| pandemic response. Republicans took control of the House and
| then redefined the agenda to be their own partisan viewpoint,
| to confirm what they already believed about gain-of-function
| and lab leak theories. They produced a nice Big Beautiful
| Report with a debatable connection to facts, which is not
| surprising in the least.
|
| > before the truth finally came up to light
|
| If you are looking to politicians for the truth...
| lurquer wrote:
| What's so 'new' about it?
| aqme28 wrote:
| This is the funny thing about echolocation in the dark-- it
| gives the bat's position away to the rat as well.
| dgroshev wrote:
| > The behavior is all the more impressive given that the
| rodents hunt at night, when they are effectively blind; the
| rats may rely on their whiskers to detect changes in air
| currents caused by the bats' flapping wings.
| zeristor wrote:
| "Rat Eat Bat" is a more succinct title.
| neom wrote:
| I've kept rats my whole life and on one hand I'm not surprised,
| they'll eat what seems like literally anything, on the other hand
| they seriously pick their battles, a rat isn't going to engage
| with anything it's unaware of, they have extreme neophobia so I'm
| somewhat surprised this rat felt the situation out enough that it
| was comfortable doing this, I'd guess it had spent _a lot_ of
| time around the bats, also surprising because the rat is a bit on
| the chonky side to be opportunistically hunting that way.
| Interesting.
| terminalshort wrote:
| How do you think he got so chonky?
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Why is this surprising, aren't rats used to torture?
| verisimi wrote:
| rats !heart bats
| jakewins wrote:
| The rats here at Lund University hunt pigeons, friend of a friend
| took a video of a successful hunt just the other week, totally
| nuts. They wait in the bushes below the trees on campus, pounce
| on the pigeons when they land on the ground.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Fucker, another reason to eradicate the pest.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| great another disease vector from bats.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| The food chain myth destroyed so many people's minds. Wait until
| you hear that deer eat mice.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Horses eat chicks.
|
| https://youtu.be/ZnYNmGMsU18
| nine_k wrote:
| The question "do rats eat bats?" sounds like taken straight from
| _Alice In Wonderland_ , and now, disturbingly, we know that the
| answer is positive.
| tomcam wrote:
| I played bass for Snatching Bats
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(page generated 2025-11-02 23:00 UTC)