Page 7 - Mouse Eared Bat News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> the smallest bat in the world, it is this tiny thing in thailand that weighs less than a penny. the biggest bat in the world has more than a six-foot wing span. there is a bat that lives in the cloud forests of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. this thing has a tongue that is 1 1/2 times the length of its body. if you stick your arm straight out in front of and you imagine your tongue could touch your fingers, it is three times that long so it can get into a flower to pollinate. >> so relative to its body size, if i stick my arm out, if my tongue could be to the end of my a...

Then they make a little divot with their front teeth, and they put their jaw up against that hole and they lick and drink and pee. it is completely creepy. who else does that? >> i'll tell you who else. a serial killer does that. however, vampire bats don't kill their victims. they just act like a mammal sized parasite. i've heard you say that the weirdness of bats was scientifically interesting to you. >> the faces of bats is a perfect example of that. if you take a bat that has a weird flap on its nose, you think that's a strange looking adornment, it turns out a lot of bats have food in the...

Been plummeting all because of an outbreak they've been fighting of a disease called white nose syndrome. >> it is a cold loving fungus that grows on the bat when the bats are hibernating in the wintertime. unfortunately this has affected in the order of of a dozen different species of north american bats. in some cases, populations have declined over 90%. >> that's huge. >> yes. it is a terrible let the to bats and ironically, it is a disease that we brought to bats. the fungus that causes this disease is identical to fungus that naturally occurs in europe. the thought is it was accidentally ...

>> ancient medical experts developed a lot of odd ideas about how you would cure rabies. they used to believe that one way to stop rabies from killing you was 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 as hangover treatment. >> then along came louis pasteur, he had been working on a vaccine for years and eventually tried to try on it a young boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. the vaccine worked. >> most of the cases in the united states do come from bats. but the risk is low. s...

Covid-19 to bats. >> emerging infectious diseases can go both ways. we do know that some other animals can get covid-19. for instance, the tigers at the bronx zoo. >> for now, most research involving handling of bats across the u.s. has been put on hold because humans are currently potentially the bigger threat to bats. there's a bridge. between ideas and inspiration, trauma and treatment. gained a couple of more pounds. that's good for the babies. between the moments that make us who we are, and keeping them safe, private and secure, there's webex. ♪ ♪ beautiful.