Bats Are Dying Too

I never understood any necessity for bats, and simply dismissed them as hideous pests that held a prominent position on my list of Things That Make Me Most Squeamish. I recall spending a summer in a Cape Cod cottage attic, where I armed myself with a hand towel and squealed as I swatted one out the window. Years later, spelunking in Asia, it required all of my concentrated effort to fend off paranoid thoughts of “When Bats Attack!” It was only recently that I learned bats are significant pollinators, an indispensable link in our circle of life—and that they are dying.

Bat Curse

Scientists from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service report that hibernating bats’ habit of hanging in large groups during the winter months could be helping in the transmission of the White Nose Syndrome (named for the white ring of fungus that builds up around infected bats’ noses), which they believe has killed thousands of bats in New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont. The fungus is normally native to plants, and could be caused by pathogens which normally wouldn’t affect a healthy mammal’s immune system, but which are somehow more easily spread among clustering bats. Bats afflicted by the syndrome starve to death by burning through their winter fat before hibernation ends in the spring. The scientists who have been researching the phenomenon found infected bats at the mouth of their hibernation caves, hanging upside down as if still hibernating; it is only when disturbed by the human observers that the bats fall dead to the ground before their eyes.

Trouble became apparent in January 2007, when a cave explorer noted a large number of dead bats at the entrance of a cave near Albany, New York. A month later, other citizens reported bats flying outside midday. According to the Bat Conservation Trust, during winter, when insects are unavailable, normally functioning bats hibernate to conserve energy. They may still leave the roost on warmer nights to find food and a drink of water, but the reported type of activity is abnormal, and indicates illness in bat colonies.