A strange disease in bats

Al Hicks once stood in front of an old mine in Adirondacks - the largest winter resort of bats in New York state. In the middle of the warm sunshine, each bat flew out of the shelter. But some of them fell to the ground, then they gasped and beaten their poor wings on the snow, trying to keep their balance with their wings.

All of them will die at night."Bats don't fly during the day and they don't fly in the winter," said Hicks, a mammal researcher at the New York State's Environmental Protection Agency . The bats you see out there are dead bats' . Bats live in very large herds. In one of the most fierce disasters affecting the number of bats in the United States, an average of 90% of hibernating bats in 4 caves and mines in New York died last winter.

Wildlife animal biologists are worried about a significant decline in the number of bat colonies at 15 caves and mines in New York state as well as in other locations in Massachusetts and Vermont. The dead bats are unusually thin, some are spotted with white mushrooms. Bat research experts fear the disease called White Nose Syndrome is spreading death to animals that control harmful insects.

Scientists have not yet determined whether bats are killed by viruses, bacteria, toxins, environmental agents, metabolic disorders or fungi. Some children have pneumonia, but the disease and signs of fungal infection are only minor symptoms.

The bizarre bats spotted a white mushroom spot on them (Photo: Al Hicks)

Paul Cryan, a bat-based ecologist working with the US Geological Survey, said: 'This is probably the most bizarre and weird puzzle we've ever encountered in bats. And it's worth noting that we still haven't found a clue. ' Merlin Tuttle, chairman of the international research and education team, Preserving Bats in Austin, Tex., Said: 'What we can say now is that this disease is one of the serious threats. Most important for North American bats compared to what we have obtained so far. We need to be careful and act immediately. '

This month, Mr. Hicks brought the entire Environmental Conservation team to the hibernation site of 200,000 bats in recent years, mainly small brown bats (Myotis lucifugus), Indiana bats (Myotis sodalis). ) named in the list of federal threatened animals. Besides, there is also the presence of the second-largest species of small-footed bats Myotis leibii in the world.

Hicks offered not to publish the location of the mine because of fears that visitors could spread the disease, harming bats and themselves. But there are also guests who do not need to listen to instructions. The day before, Mr. Hicks saw eight hawks hovering around another mine, waiting for the bats to fly out to cup them.

In the humid cellar, Hicks and the others counted the number of bats with white noses in 100 animals and obtained a rate of about 50%. He said all these white nose bats could only survive until April. Hicks was the first to study death in bats. According to information from his side, there are more than 10 laboratories in the United States trying to find the answer to this mystery.

In January 2007, a mining man reported a strange phenomenon: unusually large bats flew near the entrance to a large cave near Albany. In March and April, thousands of dead bats are found in three caves and other mines. Each cave has a number of dead or alive bats that are half occupied by fungi.

A cave has a population of 15,584 bats in 2005; this figure was 6,735 in 2007; It is estimated that until the winter of this year, the number of bats is only about 1,500. Another cave has a number of bats of 1,329 in 2006 but has dropped to only 38 in the winter of this year. Some biologists fear that maybe 250,000 bats will die this year.

Since September 2007 - the time of hibernation of bats begins, dead or dying bats have been found at 15 locations in the state of New York. Most of these locations have visitors who have lived in the four winter locations last year. That led researchers to suspect that humans could infect the bat species themselves.

Mysterious bats die in the snow (Photo: Michael J.Okoniewski / The New York Times)

Information about the disease from neighboring states is still very inadequate. Susi von Oettingen - the threatening American animal and wildlife biologist - said: 'At Berkshires in Massachusetts, we obtained information about dead bats at locations. We didn't know that hibernation happened before. Therefore, there may be more hibernation points of bat species than what we realize '.

In Vermont, Scott Darling - a wildlife biologist at the Fish and Wildlife Service - also said: 'The final number is about 20 places in New York, 4 in Vermont. and 2 in Massachusetts. We estimate the number of bats in these affected areas is around 500,000. We could not count the dead ones, because they all flew out and died there, and there were a lot of them dying. We have also received over 90 announcements from people in Vermont '

People may not suffer from this epidemic. But New Jersey, New York and Vermont advise people to stay away from caves with bats. Visitors to infected caves and mines must be disinfected with clothes, boots, ropes and other tools including a transport vehicle.

One of the infected caves is the wintering settlement of one-third of Indiana bats from Virginia to Maine. Indiana bats have pink noses, they are two inches long, and weigh about a quarter of an ounce. They are a special community-like species that often gather together in caves with a density of 300 on a square fit.

According to Mr. Hicks, 'it's ridiculous that by the time of last year, most of the time I spent was to remove the species of bats from the list of threatened animals' since the number of bat species in Indiana increased. from 1,500 in the 1960s to 52,000.

Von Oettingen said: 'From the perspective of a biologist, I find this phenomenon truly scary and terrible. If we can't stop it, we will have to see the extinction of the species that have been included in the list and even those that have never been included in this list. '

Residents living near the mines and caves in the area informed the state's wildlife protection agency at many plague locations when they found bats dead in the snow, clinging to houses that are even flying in snowstorms.

Biologists are concerned that if bats are suffering from an infectious disease arising from the cave or somewhere else, the disease can spread very quickly because bats often migrate for hundreds of miles. in many ways towards their summer places - these places are also called places for mothers. Here, the female bats will give birth to a baby bat every year, adding a challenge to the problem of the decline in numbers. According to Mr. Hicks, the female bats that are taking care of the young can eat the insects one day by half their weight.

Biologist Ryan von Lindin (with Tina Kelley / The New York Times) at a mine in the Adirondacks (Photo: Al Hicks)

Researchers from institutions such as the Institute for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Center for Animal and Wildlife Health Research under the US Geological Survey, Boston University, State Health Agency New York and even Disney's Animal World are concerned about the problem. Some came up with the idea of ​​taking care of wild bats that were worn out to help them survive in the last weeks before spring came. Some want to install temperature sensors on the bat to control how often they wake up. Others create thermal images of hibernating bats.

Other researchers wondered if the newly introduced pesticides related to the top-notch West Nile virus also contributed to the pandemic. In addition, their focus also focused on the significantly reduced poison or food source of bats.

Dr. Thomas H. Kunz, a professor of biology at Boston University, said the bat's body composition will also be studied, in part to determine the ratio of white fat and brown fat. More interesting is to study the layer of brown fat between the two flat bones in the bats' shoulders that play a role in keeping them warm when they begin to wake up in April after a long hibernation period. Dr Kunz said: 'It seems that white nose bats don't have enough fat, whether brown or white, to wake up. They die right at their sleeping places, and they are not able to get out of their coma.

The camera of the research team showed that the bats in the cave were awakened to take more hours to awaken, the Adirondack mine also encountered such a situation. Dr. Kunz stressed that if the bat becomes too thin, it will not have enough hormones to promote ovulation and reproduction. In the process of searching for the cause of a pandemic, researchers have been hampered by the lack of boundary knowledge of habits such as how much bats should gain weight in the fall, they hibernate where and how many bats live in the area.

Dr. Elizabeth Buckles - assistant professor at Cornell and partner in bat research - said: 'We will have to learn a lot about bats in a comprehensive way that there are very few animals. Well researched like that. Although the study is good. But unfortunately, it has to be done in a situation like this. '

The number of bats dying is too great, affecting both economic efficiency. A study of Brazilian tailed bats in southwest Texas shows that with their participation, bats have saved farmers from cotton 1/8 to 1/6 of the crop value by eating insects harmful. Mr. Darling, a wildlife plant biologist in Vermont, said: 'Logic shows that when half a million bats are capable of disappearing in this area, there will be a branching out of abundance. of insects next summer '

When Mr. Kicks goes deep into the cave, the density of bats hanging from the cave is increased. Like bunches of fruit, lying so still that they seem to be dead. In some crowded groups, only the noses or elbows move. Some of them still have wings around them that are closest to it. Their white belly wishes down. When they woke up, they made a shrill sound like someone grinding their teeth.

The cave floor does not have dead bodies. According to Mr. Hicks, the North American pandas came and ate these corpses. They sprinkle stones along their footprints. After six hours in the cave to collect the specimen, counting the white-nosed bats and taking photos, Hicks said to him, learning to have a comprehensive picture is also a form of measure. He said: 'I just thought I would never see this scene again. We are the last to witness such a large number of bats in our lives. "