Why bats do not catch COVID How do bats stay safe from the viruses they harbour? S. Ananthanarayanan. --------------This idea flows out of research that shows that the number of pathogens an animal order can host increases with the richness of species
within that order. In the case of bats, this richness is unprecedented - out of the 6,400 species of mammals, 1,423 species, are species of bats.------------