[THE_PUN_STOPS]

A tangent from science towards ethics, but if we’re lucky, this pandemic will finally be the level of impetus needed to end the trade of live exotic animals for consumption. Thousands of species spared to save our own.

As a group of scientists wrote in 2007 [1]:

“The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored”

[1]: https://cmr.asm.org/content/cmr/20/4/660.full.pdf

[lonelappde]

How does exterminating bats as vermin instead of cultivating and eating them spare them?

[THE_PUN_STOPS]

I don’t get your point. Just don’t exterminate them from their natural habitat?