Footage shows two of the animal kingdom’s most notorious disease-vectors getting horribly close

A study in Germany documented rats snatching bats out of the air and eating them, raising concern about pandemic risks.

Rats have been observed snatching bats out of the air and eating them for the first time, raising concern about pandemic risks.

The never-before-seen behaviour, captured on video and described in a study published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation, shows two of the animal kingdom’s most notorious disease-vectors getting horribly close.

“To our knowledge, this type of rat behaviour has not previously been documented scientifically,” said Florian Gloza-Rausch, a biologist at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, Germany, and the lead author of the report.

Bats account for about a fifth of all mammal species on earth and are the hosts for a wide range of deadly diseases from coronaviruses to rabies and Ebola. Rats are even more widespread – being found on every continent except Antarctica – and live in close proximity to humans.

For the study, researchers rigged night vision cameras at the entrances to two major urban bat colonies in northern Germany – the first inside a cave near an open-air theatre in the town of Bad Segeberg and the second in a rocky outcrop in a public park in Luneburg.

At Bad Segeberg, where up to 30,000 bats are thought to roost over the winter, the researchers captured footage of brown rats hunting them as they entered and exited the cave on 30 occasions. Thirteen of the hunts were successful.

Around the colony, they also found the remains of over 50 bats, including some that had not yet been fully eaten.

In footage of one of the hunts that could easily be lifted from the opening sequence of a pandemic disaster film, a rat can be seen balancing on its hind legs in the darkness, clearly alert to the presence of numerous bats flying around it.

Eventually one comes within close enough range and the rat is able to grab it, sinking its teeth into its prey and carrying it away to be eaten.

“Rats were frequently observed patrolling the landing platform at the cave entrance,” the researchers write.

“They were standing upright on their hind legs, using their tails for balance and raising their forelegs to intercept flying bats. Individuals were documented capturing bats mid-air, killing them immediately with a bite and dragging them away.”

All of the kills occurred at night – the scientists suspect the rats detected the prey by sensing the air currents from the bats’ wings or by feeling for them with their whiskers, owing to their relatively poor eyesight.

While the researchers didn’t observe any successful hunts at the site in Luneburg, they discovered a series of carcasses that suggested the rats were also hunting bats there.

While the report didn’t investigate the transmission of diseases, the researchers stressed that both species are known to host a wide range of pathogens.

“Such interactions may facilitate the spillover of bat-associated pathogens to rodents, potentially altering disease dynamics and expanding transmission opportunities to humans and domestic animals,” they write.

They also expressed concerns that the rats, which are not native to Germany, could be doing serious harm to the bat populations.

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