Bat-shipped crazy: Ecologist speculates on animal importers' motives

The Auckland International Mail Centre at Auckland Airport. Photo / Greg Bowker

Biosecurity staff have intercepted two mass bat smuggling shipments in the post.

The reason for the importations has not been explained - but an ecologist said the animals could have been intended as food, if not for use in medical research.

Biosecurity New Zealand intercepted 176 bats this year and all were dead, the Ministry for Primary Industries said.

Most of these interceptions were in two packages, ministry intel and biosecurity support services director Andrew Curtis said.

"The bats in the two parcels were both detected by x-ray screening at the International Mail Centre in Auckland," a ministry spokeswoman said.

"Both parcels were released after treatment."

One of the parcels arrived from Taiwan in May with 90 bat specimens.

The second parcel came from Indonesia. It contained 85 dried bats. Insects had partially eaten the dried specimens by the time the package was intercepted.

The bats had not been tanned or taxidermied so had to be treated before they were released.

Responding to an Official Information Act request, the ministry did not say why the bats were imported, or if it knew why they were imported.

An ecologist said in some countries, fruit bats were part of people's diets.

But he said the postal shipments were perplexing.

"I can't understand why anyone would do that. I've actually never heard of anybody importing bats. It's bizarre."

The ministry could only provide grainy, very low-resolution and x-ray imagery of the bats, but the ecologist said the animals resembled horseshoe bats.

"They are used for traditional medicine and as a food in some cultures, which could explain why they were imported," he said.

Overseas, several fruit bat species are hunted. Fruit bat stew is a dish in the small west Pacific island nation of Palau.

Shipments of the animals have come under scrutiny since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out.

The ecologist added: "Quite a few species are known to carry Sars coronaviruses."

He wondered if the animals were imported for medical or biological research.

But epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said that was unlikely.

Baker said globally, there were countless cases annually of zoonotic infections - when a disease spreads to a human from a different species.

But in virtually all cases, pathogens did not make the leap to human-to-human transmission.

He said evidence was still inconclusive about the role bats, pangolins, or other animals sold at wet markets played in the pandemic's history.

Of greater concern now, Baker said, was reverse zoonosis, when humans infected other animals, which then might reinfect humans.

"We've become a threat to other animals now - our companion animals, and wild animals, and farm animals."

The Department of Conservation said New Zealand had two native bat species, the long-tailed bat and the lesser short-tailed bat.

The long-tailed bat was critically endangered nationwide and the short-tailed bat subspecies ranged from "nationally vulnerable" to "recovering".

Both were in danger of extinction, DoC said.