Bats
A camera trap installed by biologist Claudio Monteza is fastened to a tree just off the forest floor in San Lorenzo, Panama, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, amid the new coronavirus pandemic. Monteza hopes his series of cameras will provide insights into which animal species steer clear of highways and which ones are more apt to check them out. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)
Scientists get creative to carry on research during pandemic

By Kathia Martínez Apr. 22, 2021 10:20 AM EDT

A Mexican long-tongued bat is held by Mexico's National Autonomous University, UNAM, Ecology Institute Biologist Rodrigo Medellin after it was briefly captured for a study at the university's botanical gardens, amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Mexico City, Tuesday, March 16, 2021. Listed as threatened in 1994, the bat normally lives in dry forests and deserts, in a range that extends from the southwestern United States to Central America. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
In quieter Mexico City, rare bats make an appearance

By Fabiola Sánchez Mar. 31, 2021 10:39 AM EDT

Liang Wannian, the Chinese co-leader of the joint China-WHO investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, speaks during a press conference in Beijing, Wednesday, March 31, 2021. Chinese health officials pushed Wednesday for expanding the search for the origins of COVID-19 beyond China, one day after the release of a World Health Organization report on the issue. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
China pushes to expand virus origin search beyond its border

By Ken Moritsugu Mar. 31, 2021 08:55 AM EDT

FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2021, file photo, Marion Koopmans, right, and Peter Ben Embarek of a World Health Organization team arrive for a joint press conference at the end of their mission to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely," according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
WHO report: COVID likely 1st jumped into humans from animals

By Jamey Keaten And Ken Moritsugu Mar. 29, 2021 01:13 AM EDT

FILE - In this file photo dated Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021, a worker in protectively overalls and carrying disinfecting equipment walks outside the Wuhan Central Hospital where Li Wenliang, the whistleblower doctor who sounded the alarm and was reprimanded by local police for it in the early days of Wuhan's pandemic, worked in Wuhan in central China. A lengthy written report published Thursday March 25, 2021, from a team of international and Chinese scientists on a joint mission to Wuhan aims to help unearth the origins of the coronavirus since it was first detected in China more than a year ago. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, FILE)
1 report, 4 theories: Scientists mull clues on virus' origin

By Daria Litvinova And Jamey Keaten Mar. 25, 2021 03:33 AM EDT

A worker wearing a mask, watches from inside a hospital across the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention after the World Health Organization team arrive to make a field visit in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Monday, Feb. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
EXPLAINER: What the WHO coronavirus experts learned in Wuhan

By Emily Wang Fujiyama And Ken Moritsugu Feb. 10, 2021 07:32 AM EST

Marion Koopmans, right, and Peter Ben Embarek, center, of the World Health Organization team say farewell to their Chinese counterpart Liang Wannian, left, after a WHO-China Joint Study Press Conference held at the end of the WHO mission in Wuhan, China, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
WHO team: Coronavirus unlikely to have leaked from China lab

By Emily Wang Fujiyama Feb. 09, 2021 06:04 AM EST

FILE - In this April 21, 2013, file photo, members of the Wu-Tang Clan perform on stage in front of their band logo at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif. China has made a formal complaint to Canada over T-shirts with a similar bat-like logo ordered by a Canadian Embassy staffer in Beijing that allegedly mocked China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, in an apparent mix-up between the city of Wuhan and the hip-hop group. There are allegations the virus originated in bats and then spread to people in the city of Wuhan in late 2019. (John Shearer/Invision via AP)
China not convinced by Canada's Wu-Tang Clan explanation

Feb. 03, 2021 06:08 AM EST

Workers wave farewell as a member of a World Health Organization team of experts prepares to leave from a quarantine hotel in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. The WHO team emerged from quarantine to start field work in a fact-finding mission on the origins of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
EXPLAINER: How experts will hunt for COVID origins in China

By Sam Mcneil Jan. 28, 2021 06:14 AM EST

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team arrive at the airport in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021. A global team of researchers arrived Thursday in the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic was first detected to conduct a politically sensitive investigation into its origins amid uncertainty about whether Beijing might try to prevent embarrassing discoveries. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
WHO team arrives in Wuhan to investigate pandemic origins

By Sam Mcneil And Huizhong Wu Jan. 13, 2021 10:54 PM EST

A man shines a light in the abandoned Wanling cave near Manhaguo village in southern China's Yunnan province on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020. Villagers said the cave had been used as a sacred altar presided over by a Buddhist monk _ precisely the kind of contact between bats and people that alarms scientists. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins

By Dake Kang, Maria Cheng And Sam Mcneil Dec. 30, 2020 12:40 AM EST

A worker wearing a mask peeps out behind construction barrier with a notice depicting a bat and advocating for people not to eat wild animals at the airport in Kunming in southern China's Yunnan province on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020. More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an Associated Press investigation has found the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting theories that it could have come from outside China. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins

By Dake Kang, Maria Cheng And Sam Mcneil Dec. 30, 2020 12:39 AM EST

Benny Yun, owner of Yang Chow restaurant, left, delivers a take-out order in Los Angeles, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020. Bigotry toward Asian Americans and Asian food has spread steadily alongside the coronavirus in the United States. Yun said even though his businesses have survived the pandemic, they get prank calls almost daily asking if they have dog or cat on the menu or impersonating a thick Asian accent. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Racism targets Asian food, business during COVID-19 pandemic

By Christine Fernando And Cheyanne Mumphrey Dec. 20, 2020 09:56 AM EST

A researcher for Brazil's state-run Fiocruz Institute holds a bat captured in the Atlantic Forest, at Pedra Branca state park, near Rio de Janeiro, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. Researchers at the institute collect and study viruses present in wild animals — including bats, which many scientists believe were linked to the outbreak of COVID-19. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Scientists focus on bats for clues to prevent next pandemic

By Christina Larson, Aniruddha Ghosal And Marcelo Silva De Sousa Dec. 14, 2020 01:11 AM EST

Researchers from Brazil's state-run Fiocruz Institute shine a light on a bat they captured in the Atlantic Forest during a nighttime outing in Pedra Branca state park, near Rio de Janeiro, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. The outing was part of a project to collect and study viruses present in wild animals — including bats, which many scientists believe were linked to the outbreak of COVID-19. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Scientists focus on bats for clues to prevent next pandemic

By Christina Larson, Aniruddha Ghosal And Marcelo Silva De Sousa Dec. 14, 2020 01:09 AM EST

Carmen Borges a reiki therapist, feeds a banana to a macaw as she sits on the rooftop of her apartment building, in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. The confinement of millions of people in their homes for more than six months due to the quarantine imposed to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, has allowed many wild animals to regain part of the spaces that humans had invaded, but it has also exposed them to colliding with electric poles, getting entangled in power lines or stray in urban areas, say environmentalists and rescuers. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
Venezuelans care for animals injured during pandemic

By Fabiola Sánchez Sep. 22, 2020 12:37 PM EDT

Researchers swap samples from a bat's mouth inside Sai Yok National Park in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, July 31, 2020. Researchers in Thailand have been trekking though the countryside to catch bats in their caves in an effort to trace the murky origins of the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
AP PHOTOS: Thai scientists catch bats to trace virus origins

By Sakchai Lalit Aug. 12, 2020 11:33 PM EDT

Residents wearing masks against the new coronavirus pass by government propaganda posters featuring Tiananmen Gate in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Thursday, April 16, 2020. Top Chinese officials secretly determined they were likely facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus in mid-January, ordering preparations even as they downplayed it in public. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
China pushes back on Trump administration coronavirus theory

By Calvin Woodward Apr. 16, 2020 04:52 PM EDT