Finding diseases from bats is harder than you might think. The researchers have to go out at night all in suits that covered them from head to toe. They would find a cave and set up a net to catch bats and a tarp on the floor to get guano, the droppings.
The researchers from Smithsonian’s Global Health Program found 6 new coronaviruses in the same family of viruses as the COVID-19. Though they do not think these new viruses to be harmful to humans or closely related to COVID-19.
Zoonotic pathogens, a germ that can spread from animals to humans or vice versa, are responsible for 3/4 of the infectious diseases in humans this century. A major source of these diseases are bats. Bats have a very strong immune system so they can host pathogens without getting infected. this together with their ability to fly far distances makes them very good at transmitting these diseases to humans. When humans pass on a virus, the bat could start spreading it everywhere.
In one cave they studied, Myanmar, Linno Cave, had more than half a million bats. Some times, tourists would come at night to see all the bats fly out of the cave, and others would collect the droppings for fertilizers for their gardens. They tested 464 bats and collected 759 samples. 48 of them had coronavirus and found 7 coronaviruses, 6 of them were unknown to the researchers.
Now that I think about it, finding new diseases is important because if we know about it we can find a cure and not have to get quarantined again.