Wednesday, October 06, 2010

You'll have to forgive me, but I have been researching bat fungus kind of accidentally for something related to school, and so I have bats and fungus and their particular relationship on the brain. (There is no connection between getting an MPA and learning a lot about bat fungus, but somehow this is not stopping me. Not that that surprises anyone.)

Anyway, the thing about this fungus is that it's creeping all over all of these hibernating bats in North America, colonizing their wings and throwing off the balance of what keeps them alive during the winter. They won't necessarily even realize it, instead just getting colder and colder and not waking up. Similar bats in Europe get the same thing, but it doesn't kill them.

They think that maybe the bats in Europe have had it longer and learned how to survive around it. And now it is here, and these bats have to learn to do the same. Though how one is supposed to learn to survive something that happens during sleep is anyone's guess. I suppose it's mostly a matter of waiting.

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