NL Interview With Rohit Chakravarty: Don’t blame bats for the pandemic

The world’s gotten a little more interested in bats over the past one month or so, since the novel coronavirus hit global headlines. In this podcast, Manisha Pande brings on board Rohit Chakravarty to discuss this much-maligned mammal. Rohit is a PhD student at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany. He studies bats in the Himalayas of Uttarakhand, investigating how their diversity changes across elevations, what they eat and generally, how they get by in their lives in the mountains. “Bats have been living all around us for centuries…they live close to you but they know how to mind their own business,” Rohit explains. The novel coronavirus outbreak has occurred for reasons that are more manmade than naturally occuring, he says. Which means eating bats, right? Nope. Listen on and find out why.<br /><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.</p>