To help quell its first Ebola outbreak, the West African nation of Guinea has banned bat soup. Bats are believed to be the natural reservoirs of the filovirus that causes Ebola, and fruit bats are a popular food in West Africa, usually cooked in a peppery soup or smoked over a fire. While boiled bat meat is presumably safe, smoked meat could be dangerous, and butchering bats for the table certainly is. The current outbreak in Guinea has killed 63 people, but the appearance of new cases has slowed significantly, the country’s health ministry said. Most outbreaks are thought to start when jungle hunters eat the flesh of apes that died of Ebola, presumably after eating fruit contaminated by bat feces or saliva. But where bats are in the diet — as they are in parts of Africa, Asia and the Pacific — no intermediary host is needed.