The first-ever evidence of rats hunting bats mid-flight has alarmed scientists, raising concerns about potential new pathways for disease transmission and new pandemics as two of the animal kingdom’s most notorious carriers get dangerously close.

The night-vision footage, recorded at the entrances of two major urban bat colonies in northern Germany, shows rats leaping to snatch flying bats out of the air and eating them, which is a behaviour never documented before.

The video, which has since gone viral, has sparked fresh discussion among researchers about the risk of pathogen spillover between species that already play key roles in spreading infectious diseases.

The video was also described in a study published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation .

For the first time a Ge

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