I just imagined the next 20 comments in this thread, and it ultimately became an argument over your loose use of the words “main” and “vector”.
I’ll pass.
So I think I'll stay with what 'Mother Abigail' of the CDC had to say, and if the 20 imaginary posters object to her "loose use of words" well too bad for them.
Ebola: research team says migrating fruit bats responsible for outbreak
Scientists have suspected for several years that bats are the wild "reservoirs" of Ebola, but direct transmission to humans is extremely rare, despite communities regularlyhunting the bats for food. Nearly all previous epidemics had been linked to the bushmeat trade, with hunters picking up dead infected animals in the forestand selling them on. Previous outbreaks saw catastrophic death rates in gorilla and chimpanzee populations, which led some scientists to think they may be responsible for the disease spreading.
Chimps, gorillas, some antelopes and even pigs which possibly eat fruit dropped to the ground by infected bats have all been linked by the World Health Organisation to the spread of the disease, but the researchers now say no evidence has been found of other animals apart from bats being infected.
Fruit bats, however, are widely eaten in rural west Africa either smoked, grilled or in a spicy soup. Leendertz said: "We spent eight days in Meliandoua. They told us they regularly catch bats, like every other village in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The evidence is not 100% and we can only say that it is possible. I would not say that the virus has emerged from central Africa. There are huge colonies of bats which regularly migrate. They can travel far in one night. I don't think an individual bat or colony migrated all the way from Congo or Gabon to west Africa. These big colonies are connected. There is a possibility for the virus to mix between colonies. They [the bats] share the same fruit. It is likely not to have even been one species of bat. The virus may jump from one species to another."
I’d meant to reply with that to your comment #14, by the way.