Study finds bats, birds don't rely on microbiomes as much as other animals

Recent research found that while birds and bats have similar microbiomes, they do not rely on them much, which scientists believe is related to their ability to fly.

“If you're carrying a lot of bacteria in your gut, it can be pretty heavy and may take resources away from you,” Holly Lutz, a research associate at Chicago’s Field Museum and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California San Diego, said in a Field Museum press release. “So if you're an animal that has really high energetic demands, say because you're flying, you may not be able to afford to carry all those bacteria around, and you may not be able to afford to feed them or deal with them.”

Se Jin Song, the study's co-author from UC San Diego, said when they began the project, what they found was shocking.

"What was shocking was that we didn’t find that birds and bats share a similar microbiome per se, but rather that both lack a specific relationship with microbes,” Song said in the press release.

Scientists found that bats' microbiomes did not have much in common with other mammals.