Fig 1: Bat species richness in India, Source:(IUCN,Batsworld.com)
Shifting of Bat colonies near human inhabitation : There has been a shift of bats population over the years. As a result of an ever increasing population, urbanization and deforestation, declining biodiversity, the colonies of bats trying to adapt and nest in the human inhabited village and city settlements and environments, in vicinity of human inhabitation areas (Jung and Threlfall, 2018; Li et al., 2019). Typically diverse environmental conditions are generated close to the human populations due to the above mentioned reasons, these changed environmental conditions makes it suitable for a diverse range of bat species to live and thrive there, not seen there before (Walsh et al., 2017; Jung and Threlfall, 2018), easy access to food could be the reason. Because of this, both the bat species number and the viruses present in bats will automatically increase. The luminous lightings of the houses attract bats in search of insects and pests. Fruit eating bats are attracted towards gardens and fields. The dark areas in the house and barns attract the bats which live in caves.
When a number of bat species interact amongst themselves, their viruses also interact and are passed from one another, theses deadly viruses will then be transferred to the human beings through different means such as: direct hands contact, contamination of potable ground water by bat faeces or urine, and infection to domesticated animals (Jung and Threlfall, 2018). Also the characteristics that are very unique and specific in bats such as gathering or assemblage during the roosting process, their feeding practices and a very resilient immune systems help in the continued accumulation and mixing of different viruses in their body that may lead to formation of RNA viruses that are highly dangerous, recombinant, novel mutant, and reassortant (Chan et al., 2013).