Bats love toddy. They relish toddy from palms, date palms and coconut flowers. When fruit bats, particularly of the Pteropodidae family, find the sweet sap in a pot, they feast on it.
In South Asia, palm sap is typically collected in clay pots attached to a tree. The top section of the tree bark is shaved, allowing the sap to ooze overnight into the pot. It is sweet and delicious. The fruit bats–bats from the Pteropodidae family, also known as ‘flying foxes’–love it. They feed on shaved bark.
Researchers conducting a study on fruit bats saw–through footage collected from infrared cameras–that they licked the palm syrup dripping into collection pots. As soon as the bat has its share of the drink, it spits, urinates and dumps its faeces into the toddy. They do this to prevent others from drinking their toddy.
The toddy pot, tied to the palm tree, ferments its contents in the growing warmth of the day. When the toddy collectors bring the pots down from the palm trees, they strain out the particulate matter. And, by the time humans turn up for their share of the wallop, the bat secretions are thoroughly brewed into the toddy. As unsuspecting humans drink their share of the sap–garnished with a generous sprinkling of bat stool, urine and saliva–they ingest the bat secretions that infect them with the Nipah virus.
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