German Scientists Suggest Hollow Tree, Bats Source of Ebola Epidemic

German scientists are suggesting a hollow tree where bats lived in Guinea is the source of West Africa's massive Ebola outbreak that has claimed over 7,000 deaths.

Scientists with the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin say they have traced the massive Ebola epidemic back to the small village of Meliandou in Guinea, where they say a two-year-old boy became patient zero of the Ebola virus when he became infected after either playing with or eating local free-tailed bats.

The German scientists, led by Fabian Leendertz, contend that there was a hollowed tree housing several free-tailed bats just feet from the boy's home in Meliandou. Children often played with the bats and hunted them for food, and the scientists argued that the bats were able to carry the Ebola virus and spread it to humans without becoming infected with it themselves.

"The close proximity of a large colony of free-tailed bats... provided opportunity for infection. Children regularly caught and played with bats in this tree," the team of scientists announced after they visited the village last April to study the cause of the Ebola virus that has now killed 7,800 in West Africa, including Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Leendertz added to Science Now that the boy could have gotten the disease from playing in the tree of accidentally injesting a small amount of bat feces. The tree has since burned down after the boy was infected with the virus.

"There must have been thousands of bats in there. That is more exposure than you can get by hunting individual bats," Leendertz said.