The team caught bats inside the cave with fixed nets and also outside, as the animals flew out for a night’s foraging, then swab-sampled them, took blood, and released them. Handling a fruit bat can be difficult because some of them are large and strong, they have sharp teeth and big claws, and in their understandable fervor to escape, they will climb up your arm to your face if you hold them the wrong way. Now imagine extracting a few drops of blood from a very small vein along the animal’s arm, or in the membrane that attaches to the leg. It’s a two-person job with a steepish learning curve,
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