Mr. Batz? The nurse will see you now.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Bats are major carriers for new viruses, like rabies and COVID-19. What if we could vaccinate bats, first?
Hongyue Li [HONG-yweh LEE] and team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have a buzzing solution. Mosquitoes!!!
They engineered a rabies vaccine that mosquitoes could carry in their saliva. Then, these flying vaccinators delivered rabies protection to bats with a single bite.
And? Administering the rabies vaccine by mosquito bite increased the levels of antibodies in lab bats. One hundred percent of bats survived twenty days after rabies infection!
And how do we get the mosquitoes to take it? Rub it on our arms!
Hongyue Li et al. ,Ecological vaccination: A strategy to prevent zoonotic spillover from bats.Sci. Adv.12, eaec0269(2026).