How fruit bats got a sweet tooth without sour health

Key Takeaways

• Researchers have found that fruit bats, which eat up to twice their body weight in sugary fruit every day, evolved key adaptations that prevent their sugar-rich diet from becoming harmful. 
• The findings have potential implications for the 37 million Americans with diabetes.

A high-sugar diet is bad news for humans, leading to diabetes, obesity and even cancer. Yet fruit bats survive and even thrive by eating up to twice their body weight in sugary fruit every day. Now, UC San Francisco scientists have discovered how fruit bats may have evolved to consume so much sugar, with potential implications for the 37 million Americans with diabetes. The findings, published in Nature Communications, point to adaptations in the fruit bat body that prevent their sugar-rich diet from becoming harmful.

The researchers focused on evolution in the bat pancreas, which controls blood sugar, and the kidneys. They found that the fruit bat pancreas, compared to the pancreas of an insect-eating bat, had extra insulin-producing cells as well as genetic changes to help it process an immense amount of sugar. And fruit bat kidneys had adapted to ensure that vital electrolytes would be retained from their watery meals. “Even small changes, to single letters of DNA, make this diet viable for fruit bats,” said Wei Gordon, PhD, co-first author of the paper. While some of the biology of the fruit bat resembled what’s found in humans with diabetes, the fruit bat appeared to evolve something that humans with a sweet tooth could only dream of: a sweet tooth without consequences.

Edited by Miriam Kaplan, PhD

Source: University of California San Francisco, ScienceDaily, January 9, 2024; see source article