North American Bat Holocaust
Transcript for:
North American Bat Holocaust MR. SAM LITZINGER
12:06:32
From WAMU 88.5 and American University in Washington, it's "The Animal House," connecting you with everything that concerns the animal world. I'm Sam Litzinger. Later, we meet Jackson Galaxy, host of Animal Planet's "My Cat from Hell." Jackson travels the country helping people to understand their cat's behavior. We'll also have a few lessons on life and love from the insect world from Professor Marlene Zuk who has written a book called "Sex on Six Legs," and Dr. Gary Weitzman will attempt to uncover secrets of the animal kingdom with answers to questions about your pets.
MR. SAM LITZINGER
12:07:02
Our next guest is Dr. Carol Meteyer, an animal lover, scientist, conservationist. Dr. Meteyer is wildlife pathologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. She joins us from Wisconsin Public Radio with a detailed examination of her groundbreaking work. Carol, glad to have you with us in "The Animal House."
DR. CAROL METEYER
12:07:19
Thanks for the invitation, Sam.
LITZINGER
12:07:21
What are you working on now, for example?
METEYER
12:07:23
My overriding project since 2008 has been white-nose syndrome in bats in the northeast, so this is a fungus that's infecting bats. We've identified a brand new fungus that's causing the infection. It was named, we're trying to determine the pathogenesis, how is this fungus actually killing the bats and why is it wiping them out in such large numbers.
LITZINGER
12:07:46
Do you remember your first case of that? It must have been both surprising and fascinating.
METEYER
12:07:51
It was amazing. So the biologists in 2007 had just seen this white material on the face of some of the bats. They went back into the caves that they investigate every single year, and they saw thousands of bats dead on the floor. So the -- the striking thing there was how the wings looked under the microscope, and with a special stain, this fungus was seen to be eroding the skin of the bat wings, sort of like a flesh-eating fungus, and the bat wings are so integral to the survival of bats during hibernation, and we feel that's what is throwing the homeostasis of the bat off and killing them during their hibernation.
METEYER
12:08:35
The cave environments where these bats hibernate is very cold, and this fungus lives optimally at those cold temperatures. The bats' immune system essentially is shut off when they hibernate, and most of their germs that would infect them also down regulate or hibernate with them, but this novel fungus has optimized the host during a vulnerable time of their livelihood and taken advantage of it, and -- and it's difficult to try to determine how a vaccine will work when the animal's immune system is shut down as a normal part of their life history. So it's a challenge.
LITZINGER
12:09:15
We're talking with Dr. Carol Meteyer, a wildlife pathologist at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wi. I'd better let you go, there may be another delivery truck waiting just outside your door.
METEYER
12:09:26
(laugh) Thank you, Sam.
LITZINGER
12:09:27
Thank you very much for being with us in "The Animal House." One of the animal world's most perplexing biological mysteries recently took a turn for the worse when researchers announced new mortality estimates for a disease that's having a catastrophic effect on an often misunderstood but ecologically important species. Here to talk about this situation is Ann Froschauer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Ann joins us from New England Public Radio in Amherst, Mass. Ann, glad to have you with us in "The Animal House."
MS. ANN FROSCHAUER
12:09:54
Well, thank you for having me.
LITZINGER
12:09:56
Okay. I hesitate to ask, but what are the numbers looking like now?
FROSCHAUER
12:10:00
Unfortunately, those numbers are really high. The range that has been estimated through this process is anywhere between 5.7 and 6.7 million bats that have been lost to white-nose syndrome.
LITZINGER
12:10:14
So are we talking possible extinction here?
FROSCHAUER
12:10:17
Unfortunately, there has been some research looking at the potential for what we call regional extirpation, so for example, in the northeast, they did some modeling, looking at in particular the Little Brown Bat which, prior to white-nose syndrome was one of the most ubiquitous bat species in North America, and those models are predicting that if mortality rates stay similar to what they are, we will have a regionally extirpated population of Little Brown Bats in the northeast.
FROSCHAUER
12:10:50
So that basically means that's not a biologically sustainable population of Little Brown Bats, and of course that has a lot of implications, you know, from an ecological perspective, but also from an economic perspective for farmers and foresters and folks that may be impacted by the loss of bats as natural pest control.
LITZINGER
12:11:13
Can you give us an update on a possible treatment, a cure, a vaccine, where are we there?
FROSCHAUER
12:11:19
We're looking at things like identifying some non-chemical control options and ways that we might be able to treat wild bats through things like, for example, a vaccination.
LITZINGER
12:11:32
And what's the status of that? Are we talking months, years, decades?
FROSCHAUER
12:11:37
It's gonna take some time. You know, if we can discover a method for control, I think we still have the next step which is figuring out how we would actually go about administering something like that in the wild bat population. So we've got, you know, bats all over the U.S. in a variety of different types of sites. Some hibernate in mines, some hibernate in caves, some hibernate individually, some hibernate in big giant clusters.
FROSCHAUER
12:12:04
So I think that there are gonna be a lot of challenges to figuring out how we would effectively treat wild bat populations once we do determine whether there are some ways to do that. So I don't see that in the immediate future, but I don't think that it's out of the realm of possibility that we're going to get to the point where we may have some method for treating wild bat populations.
LITZINGER
12:12:26
Unfortunately you don't have a lot of time.
FROSCHAUER
12:12:29
Yeah. It's kind of shocking how quickly the disease has moved, you know, from New York in 2007, we're north all the way up to Maine and into -- into four Canadian provinces. We're south down into North Carolina and Tennessee, and west over into western Tennessee and Kentucky, starting to spread through the Midwest and Ohio, Indiana, you know, really getting into the really big populations of bats.
FROSCHAUER
12:12:59
The northeastern U.S. is sort of low diversity of bats, but we're starting to get into the Midwest and southeast where the bat diversity increases, and we're starting to get into the really large populations of some of these bats, and some of our federally listed endangered species like Indiana Bats and Gray Bats. I think that the potential for what could happen in those areas is almost exponential.
LITZINGER
12:13:25
And finally, Ann, defend the bat for us. The bats can't speak for themselves -- well, the bats can speak for themselves, but we can't hear them is the problem, so say a few words on behalf of the bats. So much human energy and so many human resources are being put into dealing with white-nose syndrome. Why is the bat important to keep around?
FROSCHAUER
12:13:42
A lot of people don't actually find them to be very attractive animals, but bats are really unique. They serve a huge role in our economy and in our environment here in the United States. They are the primary predator of night flying insects, and that includes lots and lots of crops pests and forest pests. So, you know, in terms of the ecological services that they provide, and the economic benefit of bats, recent studies have estimated that bats provide about $22 billion a year in pest control savings to our American farmers.
FROSCHAUER
12:14:23
So without bats, just from a purely economic perspective, I think we're looking at some potential for tough decisions in terms of additional pesticide applications and what that might mean down the road for human health implications and things like that. Medical research, Vampire Bats, which do exist, but don't live in the U.S., have been studied to create medicine for stroke victims. If you know anyone that has had a stroke, oftentimes stroke victims are given a medication that was developed using an enzyme that is derived from Vampire Bats.
FROSCHAUER
12:15:03
The U.S. military studies bats and their echo location and their flight to develop military technology. I don't think they need too much defending, maybe a little bit, but...
LITZINGER
12:15:15
And many of them are cute too.
FROSCHAUER
12:15:17
Oh, they are. (laugh)
LITZINGER
12:15:19
Our guest has been Ann Froschauer, national white-nose syndrome communications leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Ann, thank you very much for being with us in "The Animal House."
FROSCHAUER
12:15:28
Thank you.
LITZINGER
12:15:37
In a few moments, Dr. Gary Weitzman will join us with answers to your questions about pets. Later, we meet Jackson Galaxy, the host of Animal Planet TV's "My Cat from Hell," in which he travels the country helping people to understand their cat's behavior. First, though, here's today's Critter Quiz which connects to our previous conversation about bats. You may know that bats are the only mammals capable of flight, and that they're nocturnal creatures, which may have something to do with with why some people fear them.
LITZINGER
12:16:02
There are some places where the bat is actually celebrated, though. In fact, there are three states that have an official state bat. Can you name one of them? We'll have the answer just before the end of today's program. Next time in "The Animal House"...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1
12:16:15
You're gonna see all kinds of characters. We've got six shows that we launch with, a variety of hosts from dogs, tigers, cats, puppies, kittens, iguanas, so it's got the whole mix of the animal kingdom in there.
LITZINGER
12:16:25
The story of Pets Ami, a new video channel featuring all pets, all the time. Next time in "The Animal House."
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