Yet the real lethality of Ebola, Dr. Ansari said, stems from a case of mistaken location, a zoonotic jump from wild animal to human being. The normal host for Ebola virus is the fruit bat, in which the virus replicates at a moderate pace without killing or noticeably sickening the bat.
“A perfect parasite is able to replicate and not kill its host,” Dr. Ansari said. “The Ebola virus is the perfect parasite for a bat.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/science/ebola-and-the-vast-viral-universe.html
That got me to thinking "where do bats live"? Here is a map of the global distribution of bat species:
Holy cow !!! If the Ebola virus were somehow to infect the bats in the Amazon and the rest of Central and South America, we'd be screwed.
And there's a bat colony under the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, TX which is less than 20 miles from where I live.
Not good.
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