BENGALURU: Several researchers of various universities and conservation organisations spread across nine countries including India, Germany , UK, Australia and the US, while arguing that it is premature and unfair to blame bats or any other animal for the Covid-19 pandemic given that the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 or its precursor is not known, have urged people not to villainize bats.Referring to the increasing unverified social media posts that have led to widespread antipathy and fear in the general public — incidents of the public requesting for removal of bats, destroying bat roosts, have increased in the last month in India — they said that the viruses found in two species of bats in India as per the most recent ICMR study are different from SARS-CoV-2 and that they cannot cause Covid-19.“Information on the current, and past zoonotic disease outbreaks suggest that global wildlife trade and/or large-scale industrial livestock farming play an important role in such events. Killing bats and other wild animals, or evicting them from their roosts in retaliation is counterproductive and will not solve any problems,” a joint statement by 64 researchers reads.They argue that bats, in fact, perform vital ecosystem services: They pollinate flowers of some mangroves, and many other commercially and culturally important plants. Insect-eating bats are voracious eaters of pest insects in rice, corn, cotton and potentially, tea farms. Therefore, they say, bats benefit ecological and human health, and provide intangible economic benefits.Stating that none of the South Asian bats are proven to be natural reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2, they said that scientists strongly suggest that it is highly unlikely for SARS-like viruses to jump directly from bats to humans. Also, there is no evidence of humans contracting coronavirus or any such viruses through the excreta of bats .Recently, a study by ICMR found bat coronaviruses (BtCoV) in the common Indian Flying Fox and Fulvous Fruit Bat. “However, less than 5% of the screened samples contained this BtCoV and, as the study mentions, it is very distantly-related to SARS-CoV-2 and hence cannot cause Covid-19,” they said.“The society currently needs more awareness about the bats around them in addition to epidemiological facts for a healthy coexistence. “We urge the governments of South Asian countries to strengthen the legal framework to protect bats in view of their ecosystem services and their slow breeding capacity,” the researchers further added.The actual origin of SARS-CoV-2 is highly debated among scientists. “SARS-CoV-2 appears to be similar to another coronavirus RaTG13 found in a species of bat called the Intermediate Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus affinis). However, a recent study has shown that RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 diverged 40-70 years ago from each other (a long timespan for the evolution of viruses) and hence the direct transmission of SARS-CoV-2 or its precursor from bats to humans is improbable,” the researchers said.Moreover, they added that the surface proteins of all SARS-like viruses found in bats cannot bind efficiently to the corresponding receptors of the human lung epithelium which makes direct transmission even more unlikely.“It is also highly improbable that the faeces of bats pose an immediate health risk to humans and, none of the previous zoonotic disease outbreaks, globally, show any evidence that they were caused due to contact with bat faeces. However, fungal infections (for eg. Histoplasmosis ) may arise from unprotected contact with the faeces of any wild animal, so following basic hygiene rules is advised,” the statement added.