300,000 Bats Consume 2.5 Billion Insects Every Night (Video)

Watch bats prepare for their nightly flight. More on this story https://www.insidescience.org/content….

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The Bat House and UF Bat Barn located on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville have become home for an estimated 300,000 bats. In these houses, every evening is like Halloween.

As the sun sets the crowds gather to see the current residents because they don’t come out during the day.

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“Ebola Spins Out Of Control” – Latest News Roundup

ebola

“Ebola Spins Out Of Control” – Latest News Roundup (ZeroHedge, Aug, 4, 2014):

Here are the latest news on the worst Ebola epidemic in history.

The latest infographic:

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Die-off of bats mystifies experts

Biologists are stumped by a plague that has killed tens of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands, of bats this year in Northeastern states.

The cause of “white-nose syndrome,” so named because of the white fungus that appears on bats’ noses and wings, remains a mystery. And the plague is still killing bats, alarming scientists who had considered it a winter syndrome.

“The surprise for us has been finding out that bats are still dying,” says biologist Susi von Oettingen of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office in Concord, N.H. Biologists combing summertime roosts report finding six species of bats affected by the syndrome in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut, she says.

“I’m continuing to get calls on a daily basis from cities and residents reporting dead bats,” says Scott Darling of the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife. Spot surveys are being done in the five states, but conservation officials won’t get a solid sense of further losses until later this month when male bats begin returning to caves, Darling says.

One bat can eat more than a pound of night-time insects in a week. White-nose syndrome threatens the endangered Indiana bat, Darling says, and agricultural pest numbers may explode without bats.

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