Bats in the belfry? Hell, I hope so!

[flamin lib]

I decided this weekend to install a bat house in hopes of attracting bats to kill off some of the mosquitoes that plague me every summer. Besides, it seemed like a cool idea. Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess, so I did some research and found some very interesting facts.

Bats are not rodents, nor are they birds. They are so unique that biologists designate them a special category called 'Chiroptera’, which means hand-wing, and they are placed with primates in the grand scheme of animal nomenclature. They are more akin to the great apes and us humans than to mice.

There are about 30 species of bats in Texas, most are migratory and spend the winter in Mexico, the rest hibernate during the cold months. Virtually all of them are either endangered or near endangered. In Arlington there are five species, two of which are tree dwelling and do not use houses, and we have both the largest and smallest of the N American bats. The most prevalent is the Mexican Freetailed bat that is the official Texas state flying mammal. Didn’t know we had one of those did you?

Freetails appear to be the most intelligent of the bats and have 25 identified vocalizations which they string together into “sentences”. They also use rising and falling inflection as we do. That may not sound like a lot but remember that we only have 26 letters to work with! Bats are among the most slowly reproducing mammals in the world averaging only one pup per year of which many do not survive, hence their imperiled survival as a species. A mother bat will defend her pup with her life, morn it’s loss and risk her life to retrieve it should it fall from the roost. Should a pup fall the mother bat will land on the ground, entice the baby to climb on her back and then climb back up to the roost with it. If attacked during a rescue the mother bat will cover the pup with her body and wings and die before abandoning her baby. Female bats will inhabit the same roost each year while male bats move from roost to roost. They are very territorial and will return to a roost even if captured and released hundreds of miles away. Bats cover 40-60 miles every night in search of food and consume almost 5000 insects per bat, about half their body weight. Think about eating 30 pizzas at a single sitting! Bats along the southern border of the US act as a wall of protection for the grain fields in the heartland. Consuming thousands of tons of migrating moths that would feed on wheat and corn in the breadbasket Texas bats protect crops as far north as the Canadian border.

Humans have nothing to fear from bats. Considering that a large freetail bat with a 6-inch wingspan weighs about as much a quarter they have a lot more to fear from us than we do them. They won’t make nests in your hair; in fact they don’t make nests anywhere preferring quiet dark places where they won’t be disturbed. Bats do not carry rabies. Less than 1% of reported rabies cases worldwide can be traced to bats as compared to 90% for domesticated dogs and cats, the remainder divided among other domesticated and wild animals. In the US only four deaths from rabies are reported annually, almost all from pets. More people are mauled to death by pet dogs in the US every year than are harmed by bats in a decade. Bats do not carry other diseases, even West Nile. In fact, their diet of night flying insects is a great help in reducing the number of West Nile carrying mosquitoes. Bats do not suck blood. Only one species, native to Mexico and South America, is known to take blood and then almost exclusively from livestock. The bats we have in Texas are very timid and it is highly unlikely that you will ever encounter a bat unless it is sick or a lost juvenile. They are just another wild creature, not unlike a pigeon and how often are we threatened by pidgeons?

Bat populations are in serious decline. Mexican bat populations have fallen by 95% from the 1930s and between 1936 and 1973 the bat population in Carlsbad Cavern declined from 8.7 million to about 220,000, a 98.5% loss. The population in Eagle Creek Cave in New Mexico, the largest roost in the United States, declined from 25 million to 30,000 in the six years from 1963 to 1970, a loss of 99.9%. It is believed that the decline was due to the use of DDT, which is cumulative in fatty tissue and was responsible for the near extinction of the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. There has been some recovery with the disuse of DDT but populations have only returned to 10-20% of the 1930’s level. Unlike birds that have multiple young and sometimes multiple nests each year bats, with rare exception, only produce one pup each season.

For all this our laws do not protect bats, even the most endangered species. Although the US protects migratory animals and has treaties with neighboring countries bats are excluded. They need all the help they can get.

More information here:

http://www.batworld.org/
http://www.batcon.org/home/default.asp

[Paladin]

1. Bats Most Certainly DO Carry Rabies.

Your statement could not be any more wrong. My father was a veterinarian and an expert on diseases carried by animals; he lost a close associate to bat-transmitted rabies. And your comparison of bats with pidgeons is a non-starter: bats are warm-blooded and can therefore carry and spread rabies; birds can't.

Letting your Bats Are Groovy mindset obscure plain fact is truly unfortunate......

[flamin lib]

2. Bats can carry rabies just as any other wild animal can. However

the perception that bats are "rabies carriers" is incorrect. The WHO reports that less than 1% of the 30,000 reported rabies cases are attributable to bats. More than 90% of human cases are from domesticated pets that contracted the disease from wild animals and then bit their owners. Skunks are the worst offenders followed by raccoons. Bats are far down the list of carriers.

Hysteria such as that exhibited in your respose is unwarrented.

[Paladin]

4. You, Know, Being Accused Of Hysteria Doesn't Sting Much......

...when it comes from somebody issuing erroneous, self-contradictory and potentially dangerous statements about a disease as gruesome and 99.99% fatal as is rabies. Help us all out with this: In your first post, you initially state that "Bats do not carry rabies," followed immediately by "Less than 1% of reported rabies cases can be traced to bats....." And in your second post, you start out with "Bats can carry rabies just as any other wild animal can," followed immediately by "However the perception that bats are 'rabies carriers' is incorrect." Let me help you out: Bats can and in fact do carry rabies. Period.

Look, if you want to get up close and personal with a cluster of bats, I'm certainly not going to stop you (particularly after this little exchange). Before you do, however, you might want to Google "Bats and Rabies" and get into the Centers For Disease Control's site, where you'll find the following: "Most of the recent human rabies cases in the United States have been caused by rabies virus from bats." Does this statement give you any pause for reflection, or do you think the CDC is also dealing in unwarranted hysteria?

[flamin lib]

5. Links please.

I'm not interested in feeding your need to perpetrate fear of one animal over another. I've done my best to accommodate you. Yes, bats can contract rabies. Yes, bats can pass rabies on to other animals and humans. No, bats are not "carriers" of rabies or any other disease in that they are far down the list of animals that are infected by the disease.

For what it is worth, pigeons are a greater health hazard than bats. The accumulation of guano in parking garages causes respiratory diseases far greater than any danger from bats. Not to say that bat guano is any better, but fear and ignorance typically result in eradicating bats while pigeons are protected by law.

Key words here are fear and ignorance.

[Paladin]

6. I Don't Have Time To Provide You With Links.....

...so just do what I said: Google "Bats amd Rabies" and the CDC site on the subject is the second one down. The quote is there for you and everyone else to see.

And I don't mind you calling me ignorant, even though I knew more about rabies and other communicable diseases by the time I was in junior high than you'll know in your lifetime. What I do mind is your spewing incorrect information about a serious public health issue. I'm referring this matter to the moderators....

[flamin lib]

7. How about let's de-escalate this?

By way of apology for what appears to be a misunderstanding, I don’t think you are ignorant. My comment about eradicating bats out of fear and ignorance was in reference to those few who actively try to extinguish entire species because of lack of understanding, so unless you’ve been out there killing bats in their roosts that was not a reference to you personally.

I went to CDC and read the article. “Most recent cases” are attributable to bats. What, exactly, does that mean? The National Institute of Health reports that between 1980 and 1996 there were 32 cases of rabies in the US, an average of 2 per year. Of those half were traced to bats. Prior to 1960 most cases were traced to domestic pets, largely dogs. What changed things? First, the nationwide enforcement of rabies vaccinations for pets, second, improvements in animal control in urban areas and finally the overall decrease in the number of rabies cases because of those two factors. This according to articles cited below. By way of reference in 2007, New York State found 0 infected dogs, 2 cats, 14 raccoons and one bat. Between 1930 to 1944 they reported between 60 and 200 infected dogs a year—didn’t reference this, too much minutia.

According to the NIH there are about 50,000 cases of rabies worldwide annually (1-4 in the US) and most are from domestic animals in developing countries. Domestic animals are infected by wild animals; notably raccoons, skunks and bats in that order. Most deaths are children. Why? Because children often don’t tell of animal bites and therefore don’t get treatment. (I cited 30,000 cases earlier but it was a different source).

The British Isles were 100% free of rabies for a number of years due to strict quarantine of imported animals, enforcement of vaccination laws, and aggressive wild animal control. However, rabies has been recently discovered in Scotland. In Scotland 100% of rabies cases are attributable to bats. Why? Bats are the only wild animal that can cross the channel from Europe to the isles.

Every mammal can contract rabies and having contracted it pass it to other mammals. People contract rabies at the rate of 1-4 per year in the United States. Are people “carriers” of rabies? I don’t think I’d get an argument if I answered, ”No” to that question.

The whole point of this is that while bats do contract rabies and are responsible for some human infections it is not because they are inherently “carriers” of the disease any more than any other wild animal or even humans are “carriers”. If the CDC is correct in that most recent cases are attributable to bats (the NIH is at variance with that) it is only because the other vectors for infection have been largely eliminated with a responding decrease in number of infections. Hypothetically, if there were 10 reported cases of rabies in 1960 with 5 from dogs, 3 from skunks, two from raccoons and one from a bat and in intervening years all dogs were vaccinated and infected skunks and raccoons were caught by animal control that would leave only bats as a vector and only 1 case of rabies a year. Just like Scotland 100% of rabies cases would be attributed to bats.

I am not out to infect the world with rabies. I am not so enamored with one species of animals that I’m blind to possible dangers, I just try to keep it all in perspective. If 4.7 million people were bitten by bats every year like they are by dogs, I'd be a bit more exercised over it. If 200 people a year died from bat bites like die from hitting white tailed deer with their car, I'd get a bit more excited. If 73 people died from bat induced rabies every year like those who die from lightning strikes I'd jump right on that bandwagon.

As it is, I'm not so worried.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9634432 National institute of health report on Rabies in the US 1980-1996

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17696853?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus National institute of health report on Rabies in the US 2006

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001334.htm National institute of Health report on rabies world wide,

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/7050.php Rabies in the US and worldwide report from Medical News today condensed from CDC reports.

http://www.wadsworth.org/rabies/history.htm New York State rabies

http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html dog bites

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0522_030522_lightning.html lightning strikes

[Paladin]

8. Well Stated. A De-Escalation Suits Me Fine.

We're all products of both nature and nuture; my late father's life work was in combatting diseases communicable from animals to humans, so I got a lot of exposure to such things at an early age. The first time I had a medium rare steak was when I was out of my home and in college, and it came to me by accident that way; all meats in our family meals were cooked well done while I was growing up (I've eaten steak medium rare ever since, and when I go to a sushi place, I swear I can feel my dad revolving in his grave).

It occured to me in considering our back-and-forth that one of the main reasons people can afford to worry less about diseases such as rabies is due to the efforts of dedicated public health officials all over the world, people like my father: overworked, underpaid civil servants; hard-nosed individuals putting measures into place to bring transmittal numbers down, many times in the face of powerful, well-heeled political opposition (meat packers, for example). Not a bad legacy to leave behind.

Hope you get a lot of pleasure out of the bats that are attracted to your installation. Sincerely.....

[flamin lib]

9. Peace. . . .nt

[SteveM]

3. Bats are great, esp. where mosquitoes are a problem (think of THEIR diseases)

[Hellenic_Pagan]

10. Bats are great

We built bathouses when i was in scouting, and i put them up in our backyard. My dad really appreciated them, as they added to the "natural pest control" by dad believed in (we had an organic garden).

Bats have gotten a bad wrap in the media, but like many things of "urban legend", when you learn the truth about bats, you find that they are a good creature that can live in harmony with humans.

If you guys are ever in Austin, Texas from May through October, i recommed seeing the Congress street bats. Seeing them take off at dusk is really cool - and it draws a real crowd every night which is also good for "ppl watching".

To learn more about bats, and support conservation of the cute little guys, visit http://www.batcon.org/home/default.asp">bat conservation international.