this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
200 points (100.0% liked)
Opossums
4720 readers
89 users here now
It's opossum posting time!
This is an inclusive community
Rules:
- No hate speech
- No callouts or personal attacks
- No spam
- No NSFW content
Related Communities
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Bats, which are not marsupials, have a really high body temperature and can live to like 30.
I saw a youtube video covering a paper that explained that even though they catch viruses the high temperature makes it really hard on the virus, so bats can basically ignore the infection. Bad for us since they also fly so they make great carriers, but the bats have it pretty good.
bats is very mysterious, i think its due to thier long evolutionary history compared to most mammals, allow them to co-exist with the pathogens. they suddenly came into the picture right before the cretacaeuous ended, we dont even know what bats evolved from. funny thing one of the clues is "bat bugs" which are predecessors to bed bugs( and they can infect humans). other unusual mammals are solenedons/nosphenthes lineages.