Contact: Samuel Hughes
STARKVILLE, Miss.—From some 8,000 miles away, Mississippi State scientist Manuel Ruiz-Aravena in the university’s Forest and Wildlife Research Center is studying flying foxes, or fruit bats, in Australia to determine the likely causes of viral spillover from animal to human.
The assistant professor in wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture watches thousands of signatures streak across his computer screen as a cauldron of flying foxes leave their roost near Australia’s east coast to forage. It’s a novel experience made possible for the first time using emerging technology——alongside Ruiz-Aravena’s international research.
“It sounds cliché but imagine building the first telescope. No one before has seen Saturn this clearly, and now you’re seeing it. Thi