Bats may be considered a spooky Halloween mascot, but they are actually one of the most beneficial animals on the planet: 70% of the world’s bat species feed on insects - and one bat can consume up to 1,000 insect pests in an hour. Bats also play a critical role in pollination and seed dispersal.

Despite the fact that bats occur nearly everywhere on earth (except for arctic and desert extremes), 60 species of bats are listed as endangered. And in the U.S., an estimated million or more hibernating bats of six species have been killed by White-nose Syndrome (WNS) in nine states since 2006.

To help raise awareness for bats, here is a compilation of 10 facts about bats - and a diverse photo gallery of bat species celebrating the surprising cuteness of these creatures. Enjoy!

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While you may never have heard of it, in Britain the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) carries a big stick. The Government of the day takes notice of its reports and individual ministers are called to account over failures in their departments if the PAC points them out. This month the PAC has applied its big stick to the British government’s initiatives in addressing the collapse of bee colonies and basically it said that the government’s failure was as catastrophic as the collapses it was meant to resolve.

Despite public awareness and media attention to the problem, less than half Britain’s beekeepers are registered for regular inspection. Furthermore, the research funding meant to help solve the problem is not having the expected effect because the way the funding stream was set up means it has to be shared with other research projects into other insects.

Bees matter in a recession

The situation is economically serious as well as environmentally – the PAC estimate that British agriculture could lose £200 million of crop production if bees continue their current rate of decline. Bees, and specifically honey bees, pollinate some of Britain’s major staple foods including the glaring yellow oilseed rape that fills most fields every summer, apples, pears, beans and raspberries.

The loss of bees in the past two decades has been in part due to varroa mite: a parasite that attaches itself to the drone bees that move from hive to hive. The varroa mite was transmitted to Europe via imports of the Asian honeybee – because the European honeybee does not groom as often as its Asian counterpart, the mite has the opportunity to expand numbers rapidly once it obtains a foothold. These mites then feed off the bees, weakening them and transmitting pathogens and viruses into the bees’ bodies. Untreated colonies die out fairly swiftly unless control measures are undertaken, which is why registering beekeepers is so important. But there are other factors too: loss of habitats such as wild flower meadows, roadside verges and orchards, climate change, multiple pesticides used on pollinated crops and Colony Collapse Disorder. Around 30% of bees disappeared in the 2007/2008 winter and this year’s figures could be as bad, meaning that the UK has only a third of the bees it had four years ago.

Bee schemes don’t please old beekeepers

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has set up a National Bee Unit to provide advice to beekeepers, and created a Healthy Bees Scheme which has resulted in the registration of 1,500 beekeepers with BeeBase, the National Bee Unit’s beekeeper database. Most of these beekeepers are new converts though, rather than those already keeping bees.

There is no answer in sight to Colony Collapse Disorder which is the one cause that might bring those old school beekeepers into a registration scheme. As things currently stand, they fear government intervention and ‘meddling’, being told to move or destroy hives if they are seen as potentially infected or too old to meet current standards, and they can’t see why they should sign up for a scheme that has no discernable benefit to the beekeeper.

Rural beehive courtesy of strife at Flickr under a creative commons licence

Bat fact 2: Bats’ knees face backwards.

The position of bats’ knees aids in the bat’s ability to navigate in flight and to hang by its feet. Bats cling to their roosts without expending energy, using specialized tendons that hold their toes in place. In order to let go of the roosting surface, bats must flex their toe muscles.

Pictured: Greater horseshoe bat

Image: .flickr.com/sanmartin/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Bat fact 3: Bats are not rodents - and are actually related to primates.

Bats are not even closely related to rodents. Although a shrew-like ancestor is shared by bats and primates, bats belong to their own group, the Chiroptera, which means “hand-wing”.

Bat fact 4: Vampire bats do not suck blood; they simply lap it up like a dog or cat drinking water.

Vampire bats feed almost exclusively on blood, mainly from cattle, horses, and wild mammals. To access its food, a vampire bat uses its teeth to pierce the skin of an animal while it sleeps and consumes just two tablespoons of blood. Vampire bats rarely bite humans, although a blood anticoagulant found in vampire bat saliva is being tested to help treat stroke victims.

Pictured: Vampire bat

Bat fact 5: Bats keep themselves extremely clean.

Fastidious bats will groom themselves - and sometimes other bats - for hours.

Pictured: Brown long-eared bat

Image: flickr.com/sanmartin/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Bat fact 6: Although they have relatively good eyesight, insectivorous Microchiroptera (microbats) use echolocation to find prey and avoid objects and predators in the darkness.

Bats create sounds using their mouth or nose, and when the sound hits an object, an echo bounces back to the bat. Using echolocation, a bat can detect and avoid an object no wider than a piece of thread.

Pictured: Endangered gray bat

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Bat fact 7: Megachiroptera (megabats) such as flying foxes do not use echolocation.

Flying foxes - a group of Old World bats found in Australia, Africa, and Asia - find their diet of ripe fruit using eyesight and an excellent sense of smell.

Pictured: Spectacled flying fox

Image: flickr.com/shekgraham/ / CC BY 2.0

Bat fact 8: Bats have a lifespan of 20 to 30 years.

The lifespan of a bat is the longest for any mammal of their size.

Pictured: Endangered Indiana bat

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Bat fact 9: Most bat species produce just one offspring per year.

Their slow reproductive rate makes bats especially vulnerable to extinction. A baby bat is called a “pup”.

Bat fact 10: There are over 1,100 species of bats in the world.

Bats comprise nearly 25% of all mammal species. More than 50% of the 45 bat species in the U.S. are in decline - and 8 species are endangered.

Pictured: Endangered lesser long-nosed bat (left) and Mexican long-tongued bat (right)

Bats in peril: White-nose Syndrome (WNS)

One of the most urgent issues facing bats in the U.S. is White-nose Syndrome. This devastating disease is wiping out bat populations at an alarming rate, putting several bat species at risk of extinction. According to biologists, White-nose Syndrome has caused “the most precipitous wildlife decline in the past century in North America”.

While they are in the hibernacula, affected bats often have white fungus on their muzzles and other parts of their bodies. They may have low body fat. These bats often move to cold parts of the hibernacula, fly during the day and during cold winter weather when the insects they feed upon are not available, and exhibit other uncharacteristic behavior.

Despite the continuing search to find the source of this condition by numerous laboratories and state and federal biologists, the cause of the bat deaths remains unknown. Recent identification of a cold-loving fungus could be a step toward an answer.

Bat Conservation International warns that WNS has spread beyond the Northeastern region of the U.S. and is poised to reach Midwestern and Southern states in the near future.

To learn more about what you can do to help protect bats, visit Bat Conservation International.

Sources:

• Bat Conservation International
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Humane Society
• Encyclopedia Smithsonian
• Defenders of Wildlife
• Scientific American

Images: istock.com, unless otherwise noted.

There is a growing movement to assess the value–in dollar terms–of “ecosystem services” such as storm protection (from salt marshes), pollination of crops (from bee colonies and insects), natural predation of harmful insects and parasites (by birds, bats and other animals), fertilizer from animal feces, fish in the oceans, clean water and air, and cooling/greenhouse gas-controlling forests, etc.

This movement has been gaining steam–especially with the recent loss of 40% of U.S. bee colonies by a mysterious virus (causing billions of dollars in lost crops), and the devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina (largely due to the human destruction of natural buffers like salt marshes and sand bars).

Earlier this year, in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Peter Kareiva et al, published a call for renewed efforts to put a dollar figure on the value of nature’s services. Putting a price on such services (defined as any function of the natural world that we benefit from) is extremely tricky and difficult, but not putting any price at all on these services, in the view of the authors, seems a serious mistake.

Kareiva, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, elaborated on this idea: “In this world, cost benefit analysis and dollars are how decisions get made…When nature and the benefits that nature [provides] are not converted to dollars then it can’t be on the table for those discussions and, in a way, nature’s not getting credit for what it’s doing.” (quoted from a February, 5, 2009 podcast report by David Biello for Scientific American)

The time has come to credit Nature for what it does for us. Not to do so, the authors argue, is to devalue Nature, and thus to encourage our collective ignorance and misuse/abuse of its services.

photo credit: Jon Sullivan, public domain

Bat fact 2: Bats’ knees face backwards.

The position of bats’ knees aids in the bat’s ability to navigate in flight and to hang by its feet. Bats cling to their roosts without expending energy, using specialized tendons that hold their toes in place. In order to let go of the roosting surface, bats must flex their toe muscles.

Pictured: Greater horseshoe bat

Image: .flickr.com/sanmartin/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Bat fact 3: Bats are not rodents - and are actually related to primates.

Bats are not even closely related to rodents. Although a shrew-like ancestor is shared by bats and primates, bats belong to their own group, the Chiroptera, which means “hand-wing”.

Bat fact 4: Vampire bats do not suck blood; they simply lap it up like a dog or cat drinking water.

Vampire bats feed almost exclusively on blood, mainly from cattle, horses, and wild mammals. To access its food, a vampire bat uses its teeth to pierce the skin of an animal while it sleeps and consumes just two tablespoons of blood. Vampire bats rarely bite humans, although a blood anticoagulant found in vampire bat saliva is being tested to help treat stroke victims.

Pictured: Vampire bat

Bat fact 5: Bats keep themselves extremely clean.

Fastidious bats will groom themselves - and sometimes other bats - for hours.

Pictured: Brown long-eared bat

Image: flickr.com/sanmartin/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Bat fact 6: Although they have relatively good eyesight, insectivorous Microchiroptera (microbats) use echolocation to find prey and avoid objects and predators in the darkness.

Bats create sounds using their mouth or nose, and when the sound hits an object, an echo bounces back to the bat. Using echolocation, a bat can detect and avoid an object no wider than a piece of thread.

Pictured: Endangered gray bat

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Bat fact 7: Megachiroptera (megabats) such as flying foxes do not use echolocation.

Flying foxes - a group of Old World bats found in Australia, Africa, and Asia - find their diet of ripe fruit using eyesight and an excellent sense of smell.

Pictured: Spectacled flying fox

Image: flickr.com/shekgraham/ / CC BY 2.0

Bat fact 8: Bats have a lifespan of 20 to 30 years.

The lifespan of a bat is the longest for any mammal of their size.

Pictured: Endangered Indiana bat

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Bat fact 9: Most bat species produce just one offspring per year.

Their slow reproductive rate makes bats especially vulnerable to extinction. A baby bat is called a “pup”.

Bat fact 10: There are over 1,100 species of bats in the world.

Bats comprise nearly 25% of all mammal species. More than 50% of the 45 bat species in the U.S. are in decline - and 8 species are endangered.

Pictured: Endangered lesser long-nosed bat (left) and Mexican long-tongued bat (right)

Bats in peril: White-nose Syndrome (WNS)

One of the most urgent issues facing bats in the U.S. is White-nose Syndrome. This devastating disease is wiping out bat populations at an alarming rate, putting several bat species at risk of extinction. According to biologists, White-nose Syndrome has caused “the most precipitous wildlife decline in the past century in North America”.

While they are in the hibernacula, affected bats often have white fungus on their muzzles and other parts of their bodies. They may have low body fat. These bats often move to cold parts of the hibernacula, fly during the day and during cold winter weather when the insects they feed upon are not available, and exhibit other uncharacteristic behavior.

Despite the continuing search to find the source of this condition by numerous laboratories and state and federal biologists, the cause of the bat deaths remains unknown. Recent identification of a cold-loving fungus could be a step toward an answer.

Bat Conservation International warns that WNS has spread beyond the Northeastern region of the U.S. and is poised to reach Midwestern and Southern states in the near future.

To learn more about what you can do to help protect bats, visit Bat Conservation International.

Sources:

• Bat Conservation International
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Humane Society
• Encyclopedia Smithsonian
• Defenders of Wildlife
• Scientific American

Images: istock.com, unless otherwise noted.

Colony Collapse Disorder is still with us

…though not getting the same press it did the last couple of years. According to a joint survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the Agricultural Research Service’s Bee Research Laboratory, 29 percent of honey bee colonies vanished between September 2008 and April 2009. That number is better than previous years…but not much.

I think it’s time to give back to the insect that has given us so much over our lifetimes (they pollinate 1/3 of our food supply). Here are 5 things you can do to help the bees:

1. Provide bees with a safe beneficial place to thrive.
Leave a patch of wildflowers and plants for bees to enjoy.

Leave the dandelions in the ground. Dandelions are probably the most beneficial flower for bees in the early spring. Check out this info from the Daily Green for a list of other plants bees love.

Make a bee post for bees to reside. Drill a variety of holes up to a half inch in diameter into the side of a thick piece of untreated timber. Attach a roof to deflect rain, smooth down the entrances to the holes thoroughly so there are no sharp splinters, and attach it to a sunny wall or fence. Keep the post in a dry, cool place in winter and bring it out in March. (Another bee house idea is shared here).
FYI, don’t build bee homes with new fence posts from home and garden centers. They are unsuitable because they have been treated with chemicals. Speaking of chemicals…

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Honey bees are disappearing. The story has been in the news on and off since 2006, but for one reason or another, most people have paid little attention. And the situation is significantly dire.

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There are any number of reasons that we should worry about bees: not least that without them, some agronomists predict that the planet could only survive for four years, before the catastrophic failure of crop pollination led to a similarly catastrophic collapse of human civilisation. Forget tsunamis, changes in the Earth’s magnetic core, the arrival of aliens or the mutation of some native species to giant size—our biggest risk is that we lose those small, aerodynamically impossible, stripy creatures so famous for their eccentric flight, useful wax and delicious honey. It’s estimated that 35% of our crops, globally, require bees for pollination.

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While we’re on the topic of biodiversity studies, take a look at what Sustainable Table has to say.  It covers global food and farming issues and presents some interesting resources from around the world, to read and reach out to, for your family, community, schools and businesses:

• United Nations Environment Programme, World Conservation Monitoring Centre
  Provides a good general overview of the concept of biodiversity.
• Australian Government, Department of the Environment and Heritage
  Discusses the principles and values of genetic, species, and the importance of ecosystem diversity.
• The ARK USA
  Brought to you by Slow Food, The ARK is a project designed to preserve foods that are at risk of becoming ‘extinct’ – including rare varieties of fruits and vegetables, heritage breeds of animals, and foods created using increasingly uncommon methods of production.
• The Center for Biodiversity and Conservation
  From the American Museum of Natural History, the Center integrates scientific research, education, and outreach so that people, themselves major catalysts in the rapid loss of biodiversity, will become participants in its conservation.

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  ]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/11/11/new-biodiversity-reports-and-facts-from-the-amazing-sustainable-table/feed/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/11/06/uk-beekeepers-protest-over-massive-death-of-bees/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/11/06/uk-beekeepers-protest-over-massive-death-of-bees/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:34:12 +0000 Meg Hamill http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/11/06/uk-beekeepers-protest-over-massive-death-of-bees/ Britain’s government has been warned that the country will enter into an “agricultural disaster” unless more money is put towards discovering what is killing the country’s bees.

  

  Protesters from the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA), dressed in traditional, white beekeeper suits, delivered a petition signed by more than 140,000 people to Downing Street today, calling for £8 million funding research into causes of the bee decline.

  Over the past 12 months, one in three of Britain’s honey bee colonies – amounting to nearly two billion bees, have been lost.  These losses are the greatest yet for the UK.  The causes of the massive die-off are unclear, and the apiarists fear there is nothing to prevent a similar devastation in the year to come.  The beekeepers claim that the Government is doing nothing to prevent it from happening.

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  ]]> http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/11/06/uk-beekeepers-protest-over-massive-death-of-bees/feed/ http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2008/07/01/oh-honey-eat-drink-better-series-this-week/ http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2008/07/01/oh-honey-eat-drink-better-series-this-week/#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:48:07 +0000 Beth Bader http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2008/07/01/oh-honey-eat-drink-better-series-this-week/ © Kuleczka | Dreamstime.com

  We’ve got some sweet posts for the week ahead. This week is Honey Week at Eat. Drink. Better. in tribute to bees and all they do for us, including that delicious honey. To kick it off, I want to share a cool bee fact and a recipe.

  Did you know?

  1. California’s almond orchards are the location of the largest pollination event annually. Nearly one million hives (about 50 percent) of the US honey bees are brought to the almond orchards each spring.
  2. The apple crop in just New York requires about 30,000 hives.
  3. 50,000 hives each year are needed for Maine’s blueberry crop.
  4. According to the USDA, one-third of our diets rely on insect-pollinated plants. 80 percent of this pollination is done by bees.

  Recipe for Honey Curried Cauliflower follows the jump.

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