The problem is not one of fruit bats living too close to humans, but rather humans eating fruit bats and most anything else in what they call “bushmeat”
From what I have been told bushmeat is either only partially cooked or uncooked and then allowed to spoil before consuming, for the “flavor”. (Western pipeline workers tell stories about the awful smell of the native laborers gleefully lunching on bushmeat)
West Africa is loaded with humans that act primitive and seem to have little concern with food safety. Add on the warm humid climate and its like they are living in a lab experiment, that sometimes goes bad.
In David Quammen's Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus he recounts one of the first reorded Ebola epidemics. It began when some villagers found a dead, bloated, chimpanzee and, despite it's condition, decided to cook and eat it anyway. Anyone who handled the rotten meat died, as did most of the village before the epidemic ran it course, eventually claiming over fifty victims. What you cannot help thinking is how absolutely careless and stupid those people were.
...gleefully lunching on bushmeat...
+++++
Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell lunch plans?