Hello sweetheart.
Having a bit of a stretch.
The reason I care for bats is
the same reason that people
care for their children.
We love them because
we just do.
And we help them because
they need help.
Hello bubbies.
I'm the President of the
Friends of Bats and Bushcare
group in Melbourne.
Every town and city in Australia
has bats.
They're with us and around us
all the time and we benefit
from their work
every single day.
Bats are fascinating creatures
and they form a critical part of
a healthy environment.
You can see here, the flying fox,
that's what he's looking for,
that little cup of sugar
in every flower.
And as he's getting the sugar,
he gets covered in pollen,
then flies 10km to another tree
takes male pollen
to a female flower,
and hey presto
you’ve got reproduction.
Lawrence has been caring for
the Yarra Bend bat colony
since it was forcibly relocated
from the Royal Botanic Gardens
17 years ago.
Rescuing orphaned pups
are a big part of his work.
The bats cry
when they're taken in the first night
off their mums.
They'll cry all night for their mum
to come and pick them up.
And it's very,
it's very moving.
We lose many tens of thousands
every year through
heat exhaustion,
through heat stroke,
through direct loss of their camp
through urban sprawl.
And now,
these bats are facing a new threat
from frightened locals.
And they carry a lot of diseases.
It's a problem
and it could be
very dangerous.
They want the bats gone.
Now whether that’s drastic action,
like a cull,
or simply moving the bats on,
is a matter for authorities.
From the outset of this pandemic,
bats have been widely blamed
as the source of COVID-19.
Bats are the creatures
at the centre of this
coronavirus outbreak.
From animals, possibly bats.
Bats could be the likely host.
Eating raw bats.
Live bats.
Bats, bats gathered in China.
We still don’t know for certain
the origin of the coronavirus,
but scientists believe it likely
originated in bats
and spread to humans
through another animal.
Possibly at a Wuhan market.
Bats themselves don't inherently
pose a disease risk
directly to humans.
Dr Rob Grenfell heads a team of
a team of researchers
nicknamed the “bat pack”
who are working to find
a vaccine for COVID-19.
But his team is now caught up
in an international controversy
over another theory for the cause
of the outbreak.
Two Chinese scientists
who studied bats in Australia
are being looked into by
world intelligence organisations.
It may have originated
at a research facility.
The outbreak may have begun,
not in a public meat market,
but in a poorly run
Chinese laboratory.
There is a significant
amount of evidence that this
came from that laboratory
in Wuhan.
I will tell you more and more
we’re hearing the story.
Dr Grenfell’s team has faced
scrutiny for its collaboration with
Chinese scientists accused of
leaking the virus
from a lab in Wuhan.
Both Australian and US
intelligence officials,
along with the scientific
community,
say they’re yet to find any
evidence to support the theory.
Conspiracy theories are always
abound at times of great stress.
The bat work we were doing at
that time, this has allowed us to
start the race to try to solve the
problem of COVID-19
at a much more advanced stage.
So that research itself
was vital for the responses
that we're actually taking now.
Lawrence says COVID-19
isn't found in Australian bats
or wildlife.
There's no reason for Australians
to be anti-bat
or to worry about bats.
We do need to look in wonder
at these little animals.
There are probably cures
for some cancers
that are lurking inside
the bats' immune system.
And most definitely there are
cures in there for some of
these viruses.