Thread by @Telegraph

The Natural History Museum @NHM_London has unearthed a “treasure trove” of thousands of bat skulls, skins and pickled specimens dating back roughly 300 years, which researchers hope may shed light on the origins of pandemics – including Covid-19 🧵

telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…

By indexing roughly 12,000 samples from three major bat families stored deep in its vaults, the museum aims to help scientists trace where the flying mammals have lived over centuries, and how the viruses they carry “spillover” to humans

telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…

🦇The Telegraph was given exclusive access to the Museum’s bat collection, which includes specimens that pre-date 1753 – when the world renowned institution was founded

💻Together with eight other European museums, researchers in London are racing to meticulously document the samples before the end of the year, turning disparate records into a digitised “bat library”

✍️In total, the museum is home to at least 50,000 bat specimens and the current project aims to document some 12,000 from three families: Old World leaf-nosed bats, horseshoe bats and trident bats

🧐It is the pickled bats, which have been suspended in time with their major organs intact, that could offer the most compelling clues about the origins of pathogens and pandemics

The technology needed to study the viruses inside the pickled bats has only emerged in the last 5 to 10 years – though it is likely that only around 20 per cent of samples will be well-preserved enough to extract delicate RNA viruses, such as Ebola, measles and Sars-Cov-2

Read more about the Natural History Museum’s bat collection, and the project that may yield new details on the origins of Covid-19👇

telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…