Fruit bats could hold the key to curing diabetes in humans.
Fruit bats could help cure diabetes
The "superhero" animals survive by eating up to twice their body weight in sugary fruit each day even though a similar diet for humans can lead to health problems such as diabetes and cancer.
Boffins from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) are aiming to discover how fruit bats evolved to devour so much sugar and whether the trait is transferrable to diabetic humans.
Dr. Nadav Ahituv, director of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics and co-author of the study, said: "For me, bats are like superheroes, each one with an amazing superpower, whether it is echolocation, flying, blood-sucking without coagulation, or eating fruit and not getting diabetes.
"With diabetes, the human body can't produce or detect insulin, leading to problems controlling blood sugar. But fruit bats have a genetic system that controls the blood sugar without fail.
"We'd like to learn from that system to make better insulin - or sugar-sensing therapies for people.
"This kind of work is just the beginning."