The SCARIEST statistic I ever heard!

Question
Last year there were more than 200,000 bats in a specific cave in southern Vermont. How many were there this year?


Although I am probably most concerned with the HONEYBEE CRISIS at the moment, the mass die-off of bats is beginning to muscle it's way to the front of my interest.

I had been trying to get in touch with people who study bats for the past month or two. Essentially, our laboratory had recently (and indirectly) made headlines when one of our clients got published in Science using data our lab generated. We were able to do mercury speciation of single spiders. So then I thought, what other animals eat insects? Bats.

So I called up the gal who edits Bat Research News, the premier scientific journal for bat research, because if anyone should know who in the bat science community researchers what, well it should be the editor of the only bat-exclusive journal.

Although she didn't know whether any researchers were looking into mercury in bats and bats' diets, she did offer the few names of people who conducted studies in the past.

She said it was difficult to get research permits right now because of the bat crisis. Apparently to do analytical studies, researchers have to kill the animal and analyze its organs, and with more than 90% of all bats in America having died this year, the government wasn't too interested in trace metal studies of bat kidneys.

I had heard of the White Nose Syndrome. It's a fungal infection that seems to have been the cause of death of many bats that have been found dead. However, according to my contact, there have been instances of bats being infected with the fungus, but otherwise appearing unaffected. The scientific community, she said, is now starting to question whether the fungus is an opportunistic infection. Like how people infected with HIV do not die from HIV itself, their demise is usually due to another infection that can get a foothold in the body due to a weakened immune system. Perhaps the bat's immune system is weakened due to other infections or contaminations and under these weakened conditions the fungus does the worst damage.

However, the fungus itself does not kill the bat. Instead, it causes a chain reaction that ends in starvation. White Nose Syndrome, she said, infects the bat and causes an immune response. As a typical immune response, the bat's metabolism increases. This is a problem for hibernating bats. When its metabolism increases, it comes out of hibernation and starts looking for food. In the winter, there are not enough insects available to eat, so the bat starves to death.

So far, as many as 90% of America's bats have perished! And that brings you back to the question at the beginning of this entry.


Question
Last year there were more than 200,000 bats in a specific cave in southern Vermont. How many were there this year?

Answer
Five. That's right five. 5. Cinco.

That's the most shocking statistic I ever heard!