Orphaned bat epidemic in Australia

Torrential rain has brought chaos to Australia, and not just to the humans who live there.

Australian Bat Clinic and Wildlife Trauma Centre director Trish Wimberley and her carers have helped save 130 orphaned bats on the Gold Coast in past weeks.

They saved 350 young bats during the 2008 storm season but this year think there's more going on than just wild weather.

Carers have visited several bat 'camps' on the coast in recent weeks to find four-week-old babies on the ground covered in maggots and fly eggs.

Trish said: 'They're coming down to feed on the ground. That makes them vulnerable. It's not a natural occurrence and shows there is trouble in the environment.

'Bats are a barometer to what is going on in the environment. They're our canaries down the coal mine'.

Source

Cute or not? Tube-nosed fruit bat

Picture: Piotr Naskrecki / iLCP

Cute or not? Visored bat

Photo via Ugly Overload

Are cavers spreading lethal bat disease?

The white fungus that appears on bats' noses and wings — so-called white-nose syndrome — has killed more than a half-million bats over the past three winters, but scientists had not been able to figure out how the fungus got into the bat caves and why it spread.

Now, they have big clue: Humans, specifically cavers, who "may be spreading the causative agent."

Source

Photo Credit: Nancy Heaslip, New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation
Little brown bats with white-nose syndrome, New York