You’re killing me!

Why are bats dying? It seems nobody knows, but the scientists who were once studying the strange disappearance of bees, and what was responsible for killing our frogs, are now having to turn their attention to bats.

So, not only are our frogs dying, and our bees disappearing, now it’s bats!? This may sound batty, but I think there’s a conspiracy afoot. Doesn’t it seem to you that mankind’s vital helpers in agriculture, pest control and sub-par vampire movies are all checking out and leaving us adrift to new mercies of Nature?

By Gawk! Do-did-done! Bats were done to death in New York, and thousands upon thousands dead in the Northeast. In Arkansas, 3 of 17 species are now belly-up (or is it belly-down?) and now they are suddenly dying nationwide. Yes, nationwide! The most common species of bats dying is the Myotis lucifungus (little brown ones).

Why oh why should we care about all the bats dying, or a bat extinction? Is that a problem to worry about? What are bats good for anyway except on Halloween and vampire movies? Change your morbid thinking; bats are our friends. Bats eat bugs. tons of bugs. And they pollinate plants and spread their seeds around. After one thinks about it, they should realize that their survival is vital to our own.

But don’t worry! I may have a possible cause or suggestion; one that may explain why the bats are dying. Bats, of course, rely on caves where there’s collected water, water from underground springs, leached-in rain water, stagnant water. During the winter, these bats hibernate in these very wet, humid caves. This would be prolonged exposure that could make them more vulnerable to infection.

What’s killing these bats may indeed be a mysterious illness, or is it just an underlying bacterial problem? Scientists have tested bacteria, viruses and toxins in the bats, but what about their environment? How about the underground water? The stagnant pools of water in caves? Could our water supply by mixing with theirs? Could the same pharmaceuticals in our drinking water by in the bat’s water? Why not? We excrete all kinds of drugs during our lifetime of use (read for more on my posting, “Health Alert: Stop Peeing In the Water!”). Could our drugs off set the bat’s micro-environment? Read “War on Bacteria is Wrongheaded”, by Cerebrl, which explains why our obsession with sterilizing ourselves is not a good thing.

The common symptom noticed (how could one not notice?) about these batty corpses is a white ring of fungus around their noses. The Associated Press reports on this issue saying “it was first discovered in a cave west of Albany, N.Y., in March 2007, white-nose syndrome has spread to 65 caves in nine states, turning up last winter in West Virginia and Virginia, federal wildlife officials said. There are also several caves suspected of harboring the fungus in Canada.”

One could posit that our drugs are leaching into their water, off-setting the delicate balance of bacteria to fungus ratio. If you kill off the bacteria, you allow the fungus to flourish unabated. Could our drug obsession be killing the bacteria that keep the fungus in check, which, in turn, infects the bats? Who knows, but we can’t stop at just naming it. We need to think outside the box and investigate further.

So, maybe what’s killing the bats isn’t all that mysterious, but just complicated. Unfortunately, we may not be able to do anything about the human-fouled water in caves. It may be that ALL waters are fouled everywhere. Can the same scenario of human-polluted waters be true for all the bees and for the frogs who are also dying out? So, hey, I just may know what’s killing them, frogs, bees and bats. It’s our new brand of H2O plus.

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