Latest news with #JonathanEpstein
Boston Globe
07-07-2025
- Science
- Boston Globe
Video from a bat cave in Africa offers clues on how viruses leap between species
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Through a mixture of what he called 'curiosity and luck,' he filmed far more than leopards. Hundreds of nights of footage revealed a steady procession of 13 additional predator species, among them large-spotted genets, African civets, African fish eagles, African rock pythons, L'Hoest's monkeys and baboons. Python Cave is home to as many as 50,000 Egyptian fruit bats, and the predators emerged from the cave with a winged snack, which they either hunted or scavenged, in their mouths. Advertisement 'It was amazing how many animals come to eat bats at that specific spot,' Atukwatse said. He added, 'It's basically a free meal for everybody in the area.' That is significant in part because the fruit bats, including in the area's caves, are known to be a natural reservoir for infectious diseases, including the deadly Marburg virus. Advertisement 'It's a really important observation, because we think speculatively about how wildlife comes into contact with each other, but we rarely ever observe it,' said Jonathan Epstein, a public health researcher with expertise in viral zoonoses and founder of One Health Science who was not involved in the study. 'It helps us paint the picture.' While the Marburg virus does not need an intermediate host en route to infecting humans, other novel viruses could follow such a path of first passing from bat to predator where it mutates into a form that infects humans. Although Atukwatse observed 'how these predators timed themselves in a way that they didn't encounter and disturb each other,' they were, he said, 'actively taking pieces of the bat and dispersing them.' He continued, 'These animals interact with other animals elsewhere in the park.' In a forest full of wildlife, 'there are hundreds of thousands of viruses in there being shared all across the animal spectrum, and they're shedding, eating each other, pooping on each other, sharing saliva,' said Chris Walzer, executive director of health at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. 'The interface that is shown here contributes, like thousands of other interfaces in the forest, to a viral exchange or pathogen exchange.' He added, 'It's a cool example of what's happening all the time and has been for eons.' Epstein said that 'spillover requires a lot of things to line up.' Seeing the direct contact between bats and other predators is valuable because 'that's often something we don't understand very well.' Advertisement 'It is important to understand what other wildlife get exposed,' he continued, 'and the baboons are probably the most interesting here because we know that primates are susceptible to viruses.' He described a scenario in which perhaps a significant baboon die-off in the forest was linked to Marburg virus. 'This observation becomes important because we can look back and see that these baboons are hunting these bats and that explains how they would be infected,' he said. Alex Braczkowski, scientific director of the Kyambura Lion Project and a co-author with Atukwatse, compared it to stumbling upon a crime scene. 'We know we've found something,' he said. 'We are not claiming to know what it means. We just know that it's a portal to somewhere.' This article originally appeared in
Fox News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Shooting witness of Israeli embassy staff says he saw 'same thing' in shooter's eyes as Columbia protestors
An eyewitness to the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers said on Thursday he saw the same thing in the eyes of the shooter that he did in the eyes of protesters at Columbia University. "We were in the secure room when he initially walked in," Jonathan Epstein, a witness to the deadly shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum at around 9:08 p.m. Wednesday that took the lives of Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, two employees at the Israeli embassy who were about to be engaged. Elias Rodriguez, a 30-year-old male, is the suspect in the shooting and is in custody. "I saw him screaming and then being handcuffed," Epstein said on CNN. "But what I saw in his eyes, I mean, I went to Columbia for grad school, and I saw the same thing in his eyes as I saw in the eyes of all the protesters at Columbia. Nothing different between him and them." On May 7, 2025, over 100 anti-Israel protesters stormed the campus library of Columbia University to show support for Mahmoud Khalil, the said instigator of pro-Palestinian protests at the school. Acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman, said the protesters allegedly damaged the campus building and staked out one of the library's main reading rooms, blocking the building's front door. While CNN anchor Sara Sidner said the Columbia protesters "did not create this horrific shooting," Epstein pushed back. "They gave permission, they gave the permission, and they've called for this," Epstein said. "They have called for intifada revolution, which is the same thing he yelled last night." When Sidner questioned if there will come a time when there is a "conflation" of people who are protesting and "speaking their mind, who really care about what is happening in Gaza, and those people who are like this person who did this horrific shooting, who intend to do harm," Epstein said he thinks that could already be happening. "A conflation," Epstein said. "I mean, they are calling for intifada at Columbia University. They call for intifada constantly. They're not quiet. They're loud. They're loud. You can hear it. They make recordings of themselves. So what's the difference?" In response to Sidner's question asking him if he was afraid, he said that he was, and "everyone should be," but that life must go on. "Well, I think you just go on and live your life," Epstein said. "I'm a New Yorker. I remember 9/11. You can't let them make you be afraid. You have to go on. You have to live your life. And hopefully your government does things to protect you. Last night, our government failed us."
