Bats

For many years now, scientists have learned about the past by analyzing core samples taken from ice caps or soil. They have now applied that same technique to a millennia-old pile of bat poop, with interesting results.

We all know that bats locate prey in the dark using echolocation, but … is that really all there is to it? Scientists decided to get more details on the animals' hunting process, by equipping them with tiny wearable computers.

Scientists working in the West African country of Guinea have discovered a new orange-furred species of bat. The rare discovery came while conducting field surveys in the isolated Nimba Mountain range.

While many insects that would otherwise become bat food rely on the sounds created by the nocturnal creatures to dodge their advances, deaf species of moth have no such luxury. These critters do have another trick up their sleeve, it turns out.

Ebola, Marburg, SARS, MERS, and now the new coronavirus Covid-19, all share one thing in common – they are thought to have originated in bats. But how do bats live with the viruses that seem to so easily kill other organisms?

Engineers are turning to bats to learn more about how to protect the thousands of miles of pipelines that cross the Earth by working on how to use nuclear radiation to mimic the sonic hunting system used by bats to locate their prey.

A team of researchers led by the University of Helsinki has used new miniaturized GPS tags to keep tabs on desert bats as they fly about in Kenya.

​According to a US Geological Survey estimate, anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of bats are killed by wind turbines annually – in the US alone. New technology may help reduce those numbers, however, by causing the turbine blades to whistle at the animals.

Like the Wright Brothers, evolution didn’t get flight exactly right the first time. It takes experimentation to find the best design, and now palaeontologists have found one of nature’s quirky side projects – a strange dinosaur that was covered in feathers but had leathery bat-like wings.

​Caused by a fungus known as Pseudogymnoascus destructans, white-nose syndrome is currently killing bats across North America at an alarming rate. There may be hope, however, as a potential vaccine has recently been shown to be effective at warding off the disease.

​New research has described a novel peptide found in the venom of vampire bats could pave the way for an entirely new class of blood-pressure “wonder drugs”. However, the study is being stifled by drug cartels taking over the research site in Mexico.​

A new genus of filovirus has been detected in bats in Southern China. The new virus is evolutionarily similar to the notorious Ebola and Marburg viruses, and while there is no current threat of a human outbreak, the researchers suspect it is capable of interspecies transmission.