Bat hunters of Nagaland

WHY IN NEWS?

The government has ordered an inquiry into a study conducted in Nagaland by researchers from the U.S., China and India on bats and humans carrying antibodies to deadly viruses like Ebola, officials confirmed.

ABOUT INQUIRY INTO BAT HUNTERS OF NAGALAND

• The inquiry comes as officials’ worldwide grapple with the spread of novel coronavirus 2019, from Wuhan, China, to 20 countries that has resulted in over 300 deaths.
• The study came under the scanner as two of the 12 researchers belonged to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Department of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and it was funded by the United States Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). They would have required special permissions as foreign entities.
• The Nagaland study suggests bats in South Asia act as a reservoir host of a diverse range of filoviruses, and filovirus spillover occurs through human exposure to these bats. For the study done in 2017, 85 individuals participating in an annual bat harvest at Mimi, Nagaland, were picked.
• The majority of bat hunters were male, aged between 18 and 50, and participated at least eleven times in the harvest. The study says the potential virus present in the bats may not be an exact copy of the virus responsible for various outbreaks.
• The Bomrr clan, a clan of the Longpfurii Yimchungii sub-tribe, smoke out and harvest between 7,000 to 25,000 cave-dwelling bats, a traditional practice that has been carried on for seven generations. The clan considers the bats to be of medicinal value.
• These mammals are an essential part of our ecosystem because they are major pest control, pollination, and seed dispersal agents. They are also known to be natural reservoirs for several severe viral diseases, such as rabies, Marburg, and Nipah.

Prelims Question

Q. Bomrr tribe which which was recently in news recently is associated with which state?
a)Chhattisgarh
b)Nagaland
c)Mizoram
d)Andhra Pradesh

Answer to the Prelims Question