A situation arose in New York and Vermont this past winter not unlike that of the bees but this time the victims were bats. An alarming number of bats died after having ventured out in the daytime only to be preyed on by birds or frozen to death after not returning to their caves. Many of the bats suffered from recognizable diseases that their weakened immune systems couldn’t fight off. Who’s to say which of the diseases detected among the dead bats explains their seemingly suicidal behavior?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/science/25bats.html?_r=3&ref=science&oref=slogin
&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19174588

To make matters worse, bats were close to being removed from the Federal endangered species list but after dying off by the thousands, they’re back into the endangered species territory. It’s easy to see that with bat migration, the entire continent could become at risk. Without a clear answer to what is happening, biologists have been tasked with trying to prevent the spread of further infection. For now scientists have restricted human interaction with infected bats to the best of their ability and claim humans aren’t prone to the condition, but could this syndrome eventually mutate and affect us? What other repercussions could the disappearances of bats have on our environment?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 7:40 am and is filed under Natural Phenomena. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.