The Secret Bataclysm: White Nose Syndrome and Extinction | Science Blogs | WIRED

The Secret Bataclysm: White Nose Syndrome and Extinction | Science Blogs | WIRED: "In 2013, I got to participate in a bat census at the American Museum of Natural History’s Southwestern Research Station, a biological hotspot with more kinds of bats than anywhere else in the US.

I discovered fruit bats smell like a slice of fresh pineapple, and have delightful upturned noses speckled with pollen. Insect-eating bats…. smell a bit like a cat litter-box. But they are still fluffy and cute, like flying leathery hamsters.

Trying to convince people they should love bats (and that bats aren’t rodents) is not easy. When I recounted my amazing bat experience was to friends, inevitably they described their fear of bats and how best to kill said bats with blunt instruments. So, pretty much the same conversations I have with everyone about spiders."



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