A mysterious disease is wiping out one of the world’s smallest bats, the aptly named “little brown bat,” which has an extensive range across the United States and Canada. But these tiny mammals, which are classified as an endangered species by the IUCN and Canada’s Species at Risk Act, are turning out to be more […]
Tag: little brown bat
Notorious Bat Killer Found to Have a Weak Link
Mysterious cases of white-nose syndrome plague thousands of bats each year, frosting their snouts in toxic, white fungus. But researchers are fighting back against the dark reality—with light. A new study, published January 2 in the journal Nature Communications, shows that ultraviolet rays, the light source behind black lights and sunburns, irreparably break down the […]
Fungus among us
More bad news for bats, I’m afraid—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has confirmed that white-nose syndrome (WNS) has now spread to the endangered gray bat. The fungus, which has devastated large populations of North American bats, was detected in Tennessee gray bats although biologists did not find evidence that it had killed any animals […]