and Cyprus, farmers have poisoned Egyptian fruit bats via insecticides and pesticides. Other techniques used to kill the bats include using dynamite to destroy cave roosts, or fumigating cave entrances with sulfur to exterminate entire bat colonies. While Egyptian fruit bats do eat commercially grown fruits, the percentage of crops lost to bats may be overestimated. In the 1950s in Israel, Egyptian fruit bats were declared pests, which led to an eradication campaign starting in 1958. Its roosting caves were poisoned with the pesticides 1,2-Dibromoethane or lindane, which not only killed Egyptian fruit bats, but many insectivorous bat species. Populations of insectivorous bats declined by approximately 90% in fifteen years as a result of the fumigation of caves, despite being protected under the Israeli Wild Animals Protection Law. As disease reservoir The Egyptian fruit bat has been a suspected reservoir for several human diseases under surveillance. It is hypothesized that it can spread Marburg virus to conspecifics through contact with infected excretions such as guano, but a 2018 review concluded that more studies are necessary to determine the specific mechanisms of exposure that cause Marburg virus disease in humans. Exposure to guano could be a route of transmission to humans. It has been documented with antibodies against Ebola virus in its blood, known as being seropositive, but has not tested positive for the virus itself. Evidence that it or any other megabat species is the natural reservoir of Ebola virus is "far from decisive". In captivity The Egyptian fruit bat is well represented in zoos around the world. As of 2015, there were 616 Egyptian fruit bats housed in twenty-three Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) member facilities, slightly more than 5% of all captive bat individuals of twenty-eight different species. In the future, the AZA emphasized the need to ensure that males are rotated among facilities to promote genetic variation within the captive population. Captive individuals are susceptible to hemochromatosis (iron overload), necessitating further research into the dietary risk factors for this condition, as well as general nutritional requirements for the Egyptian fruit bat. While import of fruit bats into the US is usually closely regulated, a procedural error in 1994 allowed the importation of thousands of Egyptian fruit bats (and other species). Given that the Egyptian fruit bat is highly adaptable, there are concerns that, through the pet trade, it could become an introduced species in the Southern