NWHC in the News: Vampire bats’ mutual grooming helps spread innovative rabies vaccine
July 12, 2025
By Scott Simon
NPR
Vaccinating vampire bats against rabies can help prevent the spread of the disease to livestock and humans. NPR's Scott Simon talks with epidemiologist Tonie Rocke about a new way to vaccinate bats.
From the interview transcript:
ROCKE: Well, so currently, the way to manage rabies relies on something called a vampiricide. It's actually a poison that's applied topically. The bats are released, and they go back to their colony, and they groom each other, eat the poison, and they die. But unfortunately, this approach can sometimes exacerbate rabies because it causes the bats to disperse. Once bats start dying in their colony, they'll disperse and carry the rabies with them. So we're looking for a different approach. We'd use the same kind of method. We'd apply a vaccine topically, release the bats, and then they go again and lick each other and transfer vaccine instead of poison.
SIMON: (Laughter) This is going to sound awfully naive, but - what? - you train them? I mean, what...
ROCKE: No. There's no training them. We trap them, capture them, apply the material, and they just naturally go back to their colonies. And they want to get the material off of them as soon as they can. So they go back. They all lick each other and themselves, and they consume the material.
Read the full article here on the Science.org website.