little brown bats hanging on by their tiny toenails

[aineotter]

This article describes finding little brown bats in areas where we thought they'd all (or pretty much all) died out. The assumption is that these may represent populations of resistant bats, which would be great news, especially if there's enough of them to effectively repopulate (though bats don't reproduce all that fast; being a flighted mammal

Comments

[djinnthespazz]

Dutch elm disease, the emerald ash beetle, smallpox, the list goes on and on and on. We never learn, do we?

[djinnthespazz]

purple loosetrife, tamarisk, crown vetch, kudzy, (prickly pear in austrailia/ rabbits, cats, snakes, pigs...)

[aineotter]

Megafauna (and flora) we sort of have learned about. Folk aren't so much any longer deliberately introducing species (don't get me started about the idiocy advocating introduction of elephants and lions to the American midwest). But pathogens are sneaky.

[ranunculus]

I remember a period when there WERE foot baths in airports. And questions about hiking boots and where said hiking boots had hiked. I approved. Sadly that was discontinued.

Oh, let's add Giardia to the list of offenses. Never heard of in the Sierra Nevada range until large numbers of people returned from the jungles of Vietnam and other infected countries.

[singingnettle]

Wishing well for the batses.

And for all of us.