Bat flu? Ha, it's a thing of the past. It's time you start worrying about the bird flu, say the scientists. In as little as five mutations, a group of Dutch researchers were able to engineer a strain of the H5N1 flu that is airborne among mammals. If it were to become airborne, an avian bird flu pandemic would likely follow.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the world as we know it is almost certainly going to end. Scientists have found evidence of flu in bats and are reporting the existence of a "never-before-seen virus whose risk to humans is unclear," which is almost exactly how the devastating virus in the movie Contagion is billed.