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Is there an agency that wants to know about dead bats?
By anon on Tue, 05/17/2016 - 12:31pm
Found a dead bat in our backyard in Roslindale. We think it suffered an injury which caused its death, but does anyone know if there is an agency in Boston or Mass that would want to know this info or look at the body? (By the way I love bats, so no need to share your bat hysteria if you are feeling any on our behalf).
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
Maybe the Turkeys
Can help with that info
Whitenose syndrome?
Contact the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
https://www.whitenosesyndrome.org/contacts
Contact DPH and they will
Contact DPH and they will come by, pick up the body, and test it for rabies.
Animal Control
http://www.cityofboston.gov/animals/wildlife/bats.asp
The city only seems to care if there is reason to believe someone was exposed to the bat, but it can't hurt to call and ask.
You can find some good info
You can find some good info here. Hope the bat didn't suffer from WNS. Very sad.
B.U. Bat Study Program
Boston University has a program to study bats. They helped me when I had (live) bats inside my house.
http://www.bu.edu/cecb/bat-lab-update/bats/
Rabies
If you love bats, that's between you and Darwin.
The public in general should be scared of bats. It's very easy to get rabies from the slightest contact with a bat, without knowing it, and then you die in a bad way.
Not So Much
If you are that scared of bats, that's between you and Darwin.
Bat in unusual circumstances
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/8/10-0205_article
I buy lottery tickets sometimes, and those odds are a lot worse than 1 in 20.
Cherish Bats
The public should love bats, just without getting too close. Healthy bat populations are the most effective way to reduce the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses like zika, West Nile, malaria, dengue, EEE, etc. These diseases are much harder to treat than rabies, and much easier to get. "Contact" with a bat won't give you rabies. It has to bite you, which is usually a pretty obvious event.
Wrong, and wrong
Dead wrong.
Well
Contact that can transmit rabies is usually fluid from animal coming into contact with yours, via bite or saliva over a cut or wound.
With bats, it's possible to sleep through a bite (especially if you are a heavy sleeper), which is why if you wake up to a bat in your room, it's considered an exposure.
Just finding a dead bat in your yard is probably not "contact" enough to warrant rabies shots, provided you don't touch it a lot and rub it over any open cuts.
Try Tufts Univ. -- they have
Try Tufts Univ. -- they have a veterinary school. I've heard that people contact them when they find dead owls.
Bird Permits
This is going to sound like a joke: It's unlawful to possess a dead bird of prey without a permit. How do you get a permit? Well, with a dead bird.
I had a professor who studied the auditory systems of birds. He always got a kick out this quirk when fetching dead hawks from the roadside.
Not relevant
Bats are not birds. They are also not rodents.
It's possible that this bat woke up from hibernation because of the warm days we had a week or so back, then couldn't find enough bugs to eat and starved. Bats eat a lot of bugs, especially at the end of winter.
If you're afraid of bats, perhaps you prefer insect-borne diseases like West Nile Virus or Encephalitis? There's a vaccine for rabies, if you're really worried about it.
Show us where Cantabridgian
Show us where Cantabrigian claimed that bats were birds.
probably
Likely a reaction to this comment by anon:
there. that's your bird reference.
I saw the bird reference, but
I saw the bird reference, but nothing that would cause one to have to point out that bats are not birds.
Nothing?
Not even a comment that talked about birds in a thread about bats?
When replying about what a
When replying about what a person with a dead bat should do, Cantabridgian replied "It's unlawful to possess a dead bird of prey without a permit."
Cantabrigian's reply was to a
Cantabrigian's reply was to a post that mentioned dead birds as an aside, talking about whom to contact. Either people are reading this on a browser that displays thread indentation incorrectly, or there's a problem on the other side of the keyboard.
Of course they're not birds
They're bugs!
See the seminal work "Bats: The Big Bug Scourge of the Skies."
Vet
We've had bats in our house, we also have cats. When we've found a dead bat we bring it to the local vets so they can test for rabies.
I have a theoretical appreciation for bats, but it is unnerving to find one swooping through your house.
Will the Bats Come Back?
Will the Bats Come Back? Confronting White-Nose Syndrome
The Arnold Arboretum on Monday, May 23, from 7-8:15 p.m., presents a lecture on white-nose syndrome (WNS), an illness that has killed more than 5.7 million bats in eastern North America. Christina Kocer, Northeast Regional White-Nose Syndrome Coordinator, Ecological Services Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will speak at the Hunnewell Building.
Named for the white fungus found growing on the muzzle, wings, and exposed skin of hibernating bats, WNS is associated with extensive mortality of bats in eastern North America. First documented in New York in the winter of 2006-2007, WNS has spread rapidly across the eastern United States and Canada. At some hibernation sites, 90 to 100 percent of bats have died. Kocer will speak about this fungal disease, where it may have come from, the dynamics of infection and transmission, and the search for a way to control it. She will also speak of ways to support bat populations in your neighborhood.
Fee is $5 for members and $10 for nonmembers.
Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.
I've been hearing about this
I've been hearing about this for close to 10 years now, but when I look up in the sky in my backyard after dusk in the Summer, I see bats; it never fails. Maybe it didn't turn out to be as bad as they feared?
I have a bat house up in a tree in my yard, but in 20 years the only thing that's ever seemed to be interested in it were wasps.
Here's a dead bat organization
http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=nyy
Wocka wocka.
Wocka wocka.