Two cases of rabies have been attributed to probable aerosol exposures in laboratories, and two cases of rabies have been attributed to possible airborne exposures in caves containing millions of free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) in the Southwest. However, alternative infection routes cannot be discounted.
Holy shit. When I was 16, I was visiting Yucatan with my family, and my cousins that we were staying with knew of this local cave that was “owned” by one of their friends. Basically, for 20 pesos each, their friend would take me, my brothers, and my two younger cousins on a cave tour where we were actually climbing in and up and all through this cave.
Keep in mind, this is Mexico, so there’s no regulations on this very small time operation or really much thought of safety, no equipment except for headlamps, etc. As a teenager, we all thought this was great cause it meant way more adventure. Tbf, it was a hell of an adventure for sure. But retrospectively, pretty sketchy. My youngest cousin ended up slipping on a rock we were climbing up and started sliding down the right of it with nothing to grab onto (the rock was very slick) which led to this black abyss of cave rocks some 50 ft down. Confident that little dude would’ve died if my oldest brother hadn’t snagged him by his oversized shirt and brought him back to relative safety…
But anyways, this didn’t faze us (cause we were dumbass kids who felt invincible) and we continued on with our tour guide (who was straight up wearing flip flops). After about an hour of climbing further and deeper into this cave, crawling through tunnels, he eventually brought us to this pretty big “room” in the cave that just had this weird stench about it. And the second you walked in, the floor was entirely squishy and there was so much screeching. Turns out the room was FILLED with bats and we were stepping on a lot of bat shit. Like we continued on a little bit, and we couldn’t not step on bat shit. It was up to my ankles and absolutely covered the ground.
The dude said we could continue on and there was another 1.5 hours of adventure we could do, but that was around the time we called it, and started heading back. We were probably only in that room for like 5 minutes before leaving, but had we continued on, he said we would’ve had to traverse deeper into the room to get to the next spot.
That seems like the exact conditions you’re describing for airborne rabies…
I’m glad I had that experience (only because nothing bad happened), but never again. For a lot of reasons.
Mexico does in fact have regulations against operations like the one you are describing, because they are harmful to the environment.
Enforcing these regulations can be challenging, but I’ve seen people lose everything they own over similar violations.
For example, some Americans opened an Airbnb cabin operation on protected land near by where my mama lives. They ran the operation for about a year before the government caught whiff of it. One of the owners ended up with jail time because the land they destroyed to build those ugly-ass cabins was endangered salamander habitat.
The cabins got torn down and now that area is managed by the local university for wilderness restoration research.
…meanwhile stateside, the executive branch are planning auctions of federal land to corporate developers…
Sure, but a lot of the bats have to actually have rabies first. If that’s not in the mix, you’re just converted in bat shit.
Of course. I just feel like that was my absolute highest chance of catching airborne rabies in my life, and thought I’d share.
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