First the bees, now bats dying in masses

[auditor0007]

Deadly Bat Disorder Spreads in NortheastBy MICHAEL HILL, AP
posted: 29 MINUTES AGOcomments: 5filed under: Animal News, National News, Science NewsPrintShareText SizeAAAROSENDALE, N.Y. (Feb. 4) - A mysterious and deadly bat disorder discovered just two winters ago in a few New York caves has now spread to at least six northeastern states, and scientists are scrambling to find solutions before it spreads across the country.
White-nose syndrome poses no health threat to people, but some scientists say that if bat populations diminish too much, the insects and crop pests they eat could flourish. Researchers recently identified the fungus that creates the syndrome's distinctive white smudges on the noses and wings of hibernating bats, but they don't yet know how to stop the disorder from killing off caves full of the ecologically important animals.

Deadly Bat Disorder Spreads in Northeast

 

[driveby]

how about moonbats ?

 

[Skull Pilot]

how about moonbats ?

Moonbats are definitely the most dangerous of the species. Their lust for our tax dollars is even more insatiable than the vampire bat's lust for blood. We can only hope they won't be spared

 

[RodISHI]

Deadly Bat Disorder Spreads in NortheastBy MICHAEL HILL, AP
posted: 29 MINUTES AGOcomments: 5filed under: Animal News, National News, Science NewsPrintShareText SizeAAAROSENDALE, N.Y. (Feb. 4) - A mysterious and deadly bat disorder discovered just two winters ago in a few New York caves has now spread to at least six northeastern states, and scientists are scrambling to find solutions before it spreads across the country.
White-nose syndrome poses no health threat to people, but some scientists say that if bat populations diminish too much, the insects and crop pests they eat could flourish. Researchers recently identified the fungus that creates the syndrome's distinctive white smudges on the noses and wings of hibernating bats, but they don't yet know how to stop the disorder from killing off caves full of the ecologically important animals.

Deadly Bat Disorder Spreads in Northeast

We have a neighbor that has been study'n the bees for awhile now.

Thanks I'll print the article and pass it on to her.

 

[editec]

Bad news, indeed.

Cute little things and a real boon to the environment, too.

If I'm still in my house this spring, I'll put up some bat-houses since I evicted the bats in my home a few years back.

Thanks for the head's up on this, audit.

 

[RodISHI]

Bad news, indeed.

Cute little things and a real boon to the environment, too.

If I'm still in my house this spring, I'll put up some bat-houses since I evicted the bats in my home a few years back.

Thanks for the head's up on this, audit.

Good.

We have a lot of them little critters here and very few mosquitos in the summer. I hate to spray anything if I do not have too. I would not even let the guy who mows the hay spray fertilizer last year here because it changes the enviroment. Our field by the house here is natural with no chemicals of any kind being used on it.

 

[KittenKoder]

Hmm ... thought this was simply a part of evolution. So have we completely forgotten about the rest of science now just for ... what?

 

[driveby]

how about moonbats ?

Moonbats are definitely the most dangerous of the species. Their lust for our tax dollars is even more insatiable than the vampire bat's lust for blood. We can only hope they won't be spared

View attachment 6788

 

[Diuretic]

Not good, but then anything that unbalances is not good.

I don't know about these bats but some of the bats here - fruitbats - carry some pretty interesting diseases

Unlike other Paramyxoviridae viruses which tend to be host-specific, Hendra can infect more than one animal species.

Scientists believe fruit bats are the natural ‘host’ of the virus, meaning the virus is carried by bats but has little effect on them. However, when transmitted to humans and horses, the virus can be lethal.

Hendra virus (Feature Article)

The article mentions no threat to humans. You just have to hope that it doesn't mutate and go into cross-species mode.

 

[alan1]

Bad news, indeed.

Cute little things and a real boon to the environment, too.

If I'm still in my house this spring, I'll put up some bat-houses since I evicted the bats in my home a few years back.

Thanks for the head's up on this, audit.

Thanks.

 

[RodISHI]

Not good, but then anything that unbalances is not good.

I don't know about these bats but some of the bats here - fruitbats - carry some pretty interesting diseases

Unlike other Paramyxoviridae viruses which tend to be host-specific, Hendra can infect more than one animal species.

Scientists believe fruit bats are the natural ‘host’ of the virus, meaning the virus is carried by bats but has little effect on them. However, when transmitted to humans and horses, the virus can be lethal.

Hendra virus (Feature Article)

The article mentions no threat to humans. You just have to hope that it doesn't mutate and go into cross-species mode.

Interesting thank you. I have wonder if what the farmers call "blue nose" or officials call "wasting disease" here in the deer could be transmitted or mutate with ease.

 

[Diuretic]

That's an interesting disease, I hadn't heard of it before. I don't know if it would jump species but I'm fond of arguing that science can only tell us what will, it can't tell us what won't. But if it does it can tell us why it did. Does that make sense?

 

[editec]

Hmm ... thought this was simply a part of evolution. So have we completely forgotten about the rest of science now just for ... what?

It probably is, KK.

So?

Bats eat an enormous amount of flying insects and by doing so they help us enormously.

 

[KittenKoder]

Hmm ... thought this was simply a part of evolution. So have we completely forgotten about the rest of science now just for ... what?

It probably is, KK.

So?

Bats eat an enormous amount of flying insects and by doing so they help us enormously.

However maybe there just aren't as many flying insects because they have been replaced by something else within the ecosystem. Maybe there is a new predator feeding on the flying insects and the bats just can't compete.

Here's why I can't stand environuts. Scientists agree that human involvement is changing the planet, there is no doubt, but the planet is an amazing thing, it will survive and life will go on. The only problem is that the lifeforms will change and adapt to our involvement, why is this a problem? Because eventually we will become extinct ourselves, just because the planet no longer wants or needs us. Most likely we are just the catalyst for an even more advanced species, at the least we are a fluke. However what scientists (the real ones that actually look at more than just catch phrases) say is that life "as we know it" will no longer exist, which is destined to happen eventually regardless of our involvement. This means that life will adapt and evolve to survive the changes. Whether something is toxic or not is based on each life form, and the only life forms we have studied just happen to be susceptible to what we produce, however we see evidence of adaptations in many species already that allow them to thrive in what is toxic to others. Evolution doesn't just happen at random, there has to be a reason for it, without changes in the ecosystem or environment nothing will ever evolve, nothing will ever change. The dinosaurs were one of the catalysts that forced many evolutionary steps we see today, life and the ecosystem was very different at that time, but because of the damage they did the ecosystem and all life in it became stronger and many of the species that exist today are even more capable of adaptation to more drastic changes.

So to close off, this is still all part of nature even if humans are causing the changes faster than solar changes or even planetary shifts. It's suppose to happen, but the end result will be the same, we will be extinct and a new species will evolve to do it again.

 

[Care4all]

hmmm, guess the caves are being emptied so that when we have to go in them and hide in the latter days they will be free from bats, and we will have some protection from whatever bombardment it talks about in revelation that is suppose to come....the prophesy says we will hide out in caves this distruction will be so bad...!!!

I KNOW THAT ALL SOUNDS SILLY....but this is what happens to ones mind that has read end times prophesy in full....parts of it sticks with you, even if not understandable...and then, when things start to happen in the real world that relates to this prophesy, the automatic reaction is to see if it fits somewhere in to the prophesy....

so, i am just confessing to how a mind like mine, goes on to think, when they hear these kind of things...

And there is a part of prophesy that says humans will be hiding in caves for protection....maybe an asteroid field hits, who knows????????????????? lol...

In addition to this, where it might fit in to prophesy of the latter days is the pestilence that could be brought by bats not being around to eat the mosquitos, as example....

OKAY, then when my mind goes through all of this, i just forget about the prophesy and go back to reality and the here and now.... hahahahahahaha!

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PLEASE IGNORE THIS POST, JUST THINKING OUT LOUD!

 

[dilloduck]

OKAY, then when my mind goes through all of this, i just forget about the prophesy and go back to reality and the here and now.... hahahahahahaha!

Which pretty much what the Bible encourages people to do anyway.

 

[KittenKoder]

hmmm, guess the caves are being emptied so that when we have to go in them and hide in the latter days they will be free from bats, and we will have some protection from whatever bombardment it talks about in revelation that is suppose to come....the prophesy says we will hide out in caves this distruction will be so bad...!!!

I KNOW THAT ALL SOUNDS SILLY....but this is what happens to ones mind that has read end times prophesy in full....parts of it sticks with you, even if not understandable...and then, when things start to happen in the real world that relates to this prophesy, the automatic reaction is to see if it fits somewhere in to the prophesy....

so, i am just confessing to how a mind like mine, goes on to think, when they hear these kind of things...

And there is a part of prophesy that says humans will be hiding in caves for protection....maybe an asteroid field hits, who knows????????????????? lol...

In addition to this, where it might fit in to prophesy of the latter days is the pestilence that could be brought by bats not being around to eat the mosquitos, as example....

OKAY, then when my mind goes through all of this, i just forget about the prophesy and go back to reality and the here and now.... hahahahahahaha!

-------------------------------------------------
PLEASE IGNORE THIS POST, JUST THINKING OUT LOUD!

LOL it's cute though. However it is the reason the "end of the world" predictions keep happening and renew at the end of each year. It's the same with miracles as well. The human mind will always work like that, seeing connections between something real and some vague wording. It's pretty much the same as the junk science used by environuts, thus the term "junk science", it's more religious prophecies than science and is often even based on those subconsciously.

 

[waltky]

Resistance to bat disease developing?...

Little brown bats found that appear to resist disease that has devastated species
December 21 - There is good news from Vermont this Christmas for the little brown bat, a threatened species that’s hanging on to existence “by a tiny little fingernail,” said a state conservationist who’s watched them die by the millions in the Northeast from a mysterious disease.

Scientists who visited more than a dozen sites where the bats nest in the western part of the state found thriving colonies that appear to be resistant to white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by an aggressive fungus. Pennsylvania biologists are also monitoring about 2,000 bats that appear to be healthy in an abandoned coal mine in Luzerne County in the state’s northeast, the Associated Press reported. The little brown bat seemed hardest hit in that state, where reports said the population dropped by more than 90 percent. “It’s just a ray of hope that there are bats that have survived over three years of white-nose syndrome, and we want to know how they survived, or if they will continue to survive, and if this is enough bats to . . . recover a population,” said Scott Darling, a biologist for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.

State officials asked residents during the summer to identify bat colonies and followed up with site visits. To their surprise, they found colonies in houses, barns and bat houses — like birdhouses but bigger — on the edge of fields. “They need to be further evaluated to see if they’re exposed or carrying any of the disease,” Darling said. After the recent carnage, biologists were thankful that “there were survivors here at all. We’ve observed two trends, and one is that many or most of the little brown bat colonies are gone. There were hundreds, and now they’re gone.” Over the past five years, little brown bats, and several other species, have died by the millions during their annual winter hibernation. A survey conducted at 42 sites last year and published in Bat Research News found that the little brown bat population fell from nearly 385,000 before the disease struck to 30,000, a decline of more than 90 percent. The northern bat’s numbers fell from about 1,700 to about 30, a 98 percent drop.

A separate study in April said the loss of so many insect-eating bats could force farmers to pay tens of millions of dollars more for pesticides to protect crops. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has offered $9 million in grants since 2008 to study white-nose syndrome in a bid to arrest it. The recent discovery raised hopes that bats in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions where the disease is established have somehow developed an immunity to Geomyces destructans, the fungus linked to the disease, according to a study published last week in the journal Nature. “They’re surviving in places where the fungus has been present, and present for the last five winters,” said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity in Richmond, Vt. “I’m cautiously hopeful that eventually these animals can be recovered. “I don’t want people to get the sense that this crisis is done,” Matteson said. “It’s good news in the sense that bats haven’t entirely fallen off the cliff yet. They’re still hanging on by a tiny little fingernail.”

Conservationists and biologists saw no such glimmer of hope as recently as fall, weeks before the hibernation. A June study published in Bat Research News said the little brown bat “has the potential to become extinct in the northeast in only 7-30 years” and that “a similar fate may await Indiana, northern long-eared, and tri-colored bats.” In 2009, biologists said at least 1 million bats had dropped dead over three years. Mylea Bayless, a conservation biologist for Bat Conservation International in Austin, said in October that the problem has “absolutely gotten worse since then.” “Easily, the number of states and sites where it’s been found has doubled,” she said. “It’s probably far more than a million, or likely millions” of dead bats.

White-nose syndrome, so called because the powdery fungus covers the noses and faces of bats, was first detected at Howes Cave near Albany, N.Y., five years ago. Biologists have described Geomyces destructans as athlete’s foot on steroids, burning holes in the membrane that allows bats to flap their wings. The absence of bats carries costs for agriculture. A single colony of 150 bats in Indiana ate about 1.3 million insect pests that prey on crops in a single year, according to a study, “Economic Importance of Bats in Agriculture,” published in the journal Science. Using various models, the study’s authors — Justin G. Boyles, Paul M. Cryan, Gary F. Mccracken and Thomas H. Kunz — estimated that up to 1,320 metric tons of insects were not eaten because of the disappearance of a million bats. Using various models, the researchers calculated the bats’ worth to farmers at about $3.7 billion or more per year.

Source

 

[Care4all]

Bad news, indeed.

Cute little things and a real boon to the environment, too.

If I'm still in my house this spring, I'll put up some bat-houses since I evicted the bats in my home a few years back.

Thanks for the head's up on this, audit.

It's the only creature that controls the mosquitoes around my house....sheesh, it is going to be miserable if the bats die off!

 

[skookerasbil]