Chinese woman who was filmed eating a bat apologize

Videos of Chinese women eating a whole bat at fancy restaurants went viral on the internet this week. The videos sparked new controversy during the time that a novel coronavirus is still spreading across the country. Scientists believe that the new virus may have spread to humans from wild animals such as snakes and flying mammals. The trending videos showed the restaurants preparing a soup of the flying mammal, bat, and some women later eating the nocturnal mammal. 

The virus, which can cause pneumonia, is poorly understood. Scientists now fear it may have spread to humans from snakes or bats. Pictures emerging on Twitter show soup cooked with a bat. Bats are used in traditional Chinese herb to treat a series of illnesses, including coughing, Malaria, and Gonorrhea. Authorities have pointed the blame on food markets in Wuhan from where the virus emerged. Rodents and bats among other animals are killed and sold in traditional markets. 

A video of women eating a bat

One of the videos(below) shows a woman eating the bat in a Chinese restaurant. One man can be heard telling the woman: “Eat the meat. Don’t eat the skin. You should eat the meat on its back.” 

Another video of a woman eating a bat

Following the outcry by netizens, one of the women who was identified as a famous host Wang Mengyun posted a note of apology on her Weibo, and explained the whole situation.

Some highlights of the apology:

"Sorry people, I should not have eaten the bat"

"This happened in 2016, in the South Pacific Island of Palau, we were shooting a video for a tourism program, and in one section I ate a normal daily local dish, bat soup"

"Back then I didn't know that bats host virus, and I didn't read information about bats before consuming it. "

According to relevant media reports, on January 23, Shi Zhengli's team from Wuhan Institute of viruses, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published an article pointing out that the sequence of NCOV-2019, a novel coronavirus in Wuhan is 96% consistency with that of a bat.

However, as early as 20 years ago, scientists have investigated and found that bats are natural hosts of a variety of viruses, carrying a variety of virus genes.

 "Like SARS coronavirus, its natural host is bats. But in fact, it was brought to the wildlife market through small mammals such as civet cat and badger, and then infected the practitioners and people who ate wild game and fresh food. " Zhu Huachen, associate professor of the school of public health at the University of Hong Kong, reminded that the interaction history of wild animals or living animals such as poultry and domestic animals with other animals is not clear, and contact with them may cause rare pathogens and hidden dangers.