Page 11 - Vampire Bat News Today

Wild, rabid dogs. >> medical experts developed a lot of odd ideas about how you would cure these. they used to believe that one way to stop rabies from killing you is to take a hair from the tail of the rabid dog and insert it into the bite wound and this is the origin of the phrase hair of the dog which we talk about in the context of hang over treatment. >> the vaccine worked. >> most of the cases in the united states do come from bats but the risk is low. so, unless you see a bat behaving str...

Decade and a half bat populations have been plummeting because of an outbreak they have been fighting of a disease called white nose syndrome. >> a fungus that grows on the bats when they hi ber nate in the winter time and unfortunately it affected on the order of a dozen different species and in some cases populations declined over 90%.an different species and in some cases populations declined over 90%. the fungus that causes the disease is identical to fungus that naturally occurs in europe. ...

Fors it resemblence to the former hair style of lance bass. >> there is the honduran white bat that looks like a cotton ball. then you have really weirdly ugly bats like wrinkle faced bats. i like the ugly bats more than the cute bats. >> blood feeding bats or vampire bats exist but only about.2% of all bat species. they live in central and south america and prey on birds, pigs and cattle. >> vampire bats sneak up on a cow and put their face against the cow and has heat sensors on their nose. th...

Location in which they emit sound from their nose or mouth and listen for the echo that bounces back to create a map of their surroundings. their oversized ears also help. some have such sensitive hearing they can detect the sound of an insect landing on a leaf. >> it depends on the species. some bats spend their lives alone. others will mate for life. some where he gets to mate with all of them. but they have their own sort of likings in mind. they will sometimes cheat with nearby males from ot...

Into the mystery of covid-19. in the last 20 years some of the deadliest virus outbreaks came from bats. sars. marburg. ebola. what is it about the way they spread pathogens and how they are so dangerous. >> every animal has it normal suite of viruses and bacteria it normally carries and people do as well. we carry viruses and bacteria. some of which cause disease. it is the fact that bats tend to carry a higher proportion of viruses that have the ability to affect people. the question is why we...

The american museum of natural history. why are bats nocturnal? >> well, the thought is that actually the ancestors of all mammals are probably nocturnal. small mammals scurrying around in the age of dinosaurs. it gave them access to resources others like dinosaurs couldnt use and bats never gave up the lifestyle where the ancestors of the primates gave up the nocturnal lifestyle. >> working at night, helps the bats how? >> if you think about what the animals are that are active in the air durin...

Teeth. they lick the area to clean it. they make a little divot with their front teeth and they lick and they drink and they pee. it is completely creepy. >> a serial killer does that. >> vampire bats dont kill their victims but act like a mammal-sized parasite. >> i heard you say the weirdness of bats is interesting to you? >> it is a perfect example of that. take a bat with a weird flap ones it nose and you think that is just a strange looking adornment, a lot of bats have food in their mouths...

The official name became sars cov-2. it emerged in 2019. the new coronavirus was 96.2% similar to a sample taken from a horseshoe bat in 2013. so, what does that mean exactly? >> well, 96% is a different virus. the difference between us and chimps. it means sars cov-2 probably came from bats. >> wuhan is a thousand miles away from the southern subtropical regions where the coronaviruss have the greatest risk of jumping from animals to humans. >> most she had studied were in southern china and wu...

All named for the shape of their noses. there are dozens of varieties of horseshoe bats living in a number of places. in fact there is incredible diversity among bat species. bats can be found all around the world on every continent expect antarctica. but the diversity and the unique abilities of bats make them tough to contend with when it comes to disease. they are the only mammal capable of actually flying so they can spread to other communities. >> some actually migrate thousands of miles an...

Amazon could have 100 species of bats. >> the smallest bat in the world, this tiny thing in thailand that weighs less than a penny. a bat in the cloud forest of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. it is one and a half times the length of its body. you stick your arm out in front of you, it is three times that long and so big it can get into a flower topol nate it. >> if my tongue goes to the end of my arm this bats tongue would go two more arms? >> thats right. >> there are a numb...