Latest Bats Stories
Researchers at the New York State Department of Health have identified a handful of drugs and antiseptics that could help bats fight off the fungal disease which killed more than a million of them throughout the United States, according to a weekend report from the Associated Press (AP).The disease, which has infected bats from New York to Tennessee to Oklahoma, is known as white-nose syndrome, AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione reported on Sunday.According to Jeremy Coleman of the U.S....
Four children died and hundreds of people are being treated for rabies after being attacked by vampire bats in Peru, according to various media reports published late last week.The attacks were confirmed by Health Ministry official Jose Bustamente."At this moment, we're facing an outbreak of wild rabies, produced by the bite of infected bats, in the Urakusa community, especially among the Awajun peoples," Bustamante told RTV on Saturday."We have identified 508 people bitten who...
One of North America's most common bat species faces extinction in the northeastern U.S. within the next two decades due to a rapidly spreading disease known as White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), according to a new study led by researchers at the Boston University College of Arts & Sciences.The threatened bats, known as little brown myotis, are critical in controlling insects that spread disease to humans and animals. The bats have been known to consume their own weight in insects in a single...
Survey part of national WNS monitoring effort HARRISBURG, Pa., June 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania Game Commission biologists are seeking assistance from residents in a regional monitoring effort to collect bat maternity colony data this summer. This monitoring is especially important due to the mortalities in bat populations throughout the northeastern United States, including Pennsylvania, being caused by White-Nose Syndrome (WNS). "WNS primarily kills during the winter, but...
Communication across species boundaries by echolocation calls in batsBats can distinguish between the calls of their own and different species with their echolocation calls, report scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen. This applies even for species closely related and ecologically similar with overlap of call frequency bands (The American Naturalist online, May 11th 2010).As opposed to bird song or the human voice, echolocation calls are primarily used for...
A leading bat expert with the USDA Forest Service's Southern Research Station today identified nine bat species in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee that she believes are most threatened by white-nose syndrome (WNS), a fungus that kills bats and appears to be rapidly spreading south from the northeastern United States. Station Research Ecologist Susan Loeb, Ph.D. says WNS has been confirmed in Tennessee, and she says it is just a matter of time before the fungus...
For years, Brown University neuroscientist James Simmons has filmed bats as they flew in packs or individually chased prey in thick foliage. All the while, he asked himself why the bats never collided with objects in their paths or with each other."You wonder, how do they do it?" he said.After a series of innovative experiments designed to mimic a thick forest, Simmons and colleagues at Brown and in Japan have discovered how bats are so adept at avoiding objects, real or perceived....
Despite the fact that bats are active after sunset, they rely on the sun as their most trusted source of navigation. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology found that the greater mouse-eared bat orients itself with the help of the earth's magnetic field at night and calibrates this compass to the sun's position at sunset (published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, PNAS, March 29th, 2010)Since the 1940s it has been known that bats use echolocation...
3-D imaging differentiates how various bats generate biosonar signalsResearchers at The University of Western Ontario (Western) led an international and multi-disciplinary study that sheds new light on the way that bats echolocate. With echolocation, animals emit sounds and then listen to the reflected echoes of those sounds to form images of their surroundings in their brains.The team used state-of-the-art micro-computed tomography systems at the Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario...
Three years later, hibernating bats continue to fall to this disorder HARRISBURG, Pa., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- White Nose Syndrome (WNS) has caused cave bat population reductions in New York and New England over the past three winters. It surfaced near Albany in 2006. Pennsylvania Game Commission officials say that they are expecting cave bat mortalities this winter if the disorder spreads through hibernacula as it did New York and New England over the previous winters. To track...
Latest Bats Reference Libraries
Image Caption: A stuffed Epomophorus labiatus at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Credit: David Starner/Wikipedia (CC BY 3.0) The Ethiopian epauletted fruit bat (Epomophorus labiatus) is a megabat that can be found in Kenya, Ethiopia, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Sudan, Rwanda, and Uganda, among many other areas. It prefers a habitat within arid and moist savannahs, at elevations of up to 6,561 feet above sea level. It can also be found in woodland or bushland areas....
The Indiana bat (Myotis sodalist) is a mouse-eared bat that can be found in North America. Its range primarily includes eastern and Midwestern states, but it can be found in some southern areas of the United States. During the winter, its range becomes much smaller, with most populations occurring in large clusters in only a few caves. One study conducted in 1985 suggested that an estimated 244,000 individuals of this species reside in Indiana. Its range overlaps that of the endangered gray...
The greater horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) can be found in Japan, Africa, Europe, China, South Asia, Korea, and Australia. It prefers a habitat in warm regions, with open scrub and trees, human settlements, and bodies of water like ponds. It will also inhabit older orchards, glades within woodlands, and permanent pastures, among other areas. Many of its roosts occur in houses in the northern areas of its range and in caves in the southern areas of its range. These bats travel to...
The large flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus) is a megabat that is can be found from the Malay Peninsula, to the Philippines in the east, with a southern range that included Timor, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo. Its other common names include the Malaysian flying fox, the greater flying fox, the Kalong, or the Kalang. This Old World bat prefers a habitat within many areas including mangrove and primary forests, as well as fruit orchards with a variety of fruits. Depending on the location in which it...
The big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) is a vesper bat that can be found in many areas including Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, Jamaica, Panama, and the United States. It can be found roosting in many areas including tree hollows, caves, barns, abandoned buildings, and window shutters. It is thought that these bats prefer to roost in natural structures like caves for the winter. During this time, the bats will hibernate, but if the weather is warm, flying about and even breeding can occur. There...
