Disease 'killed one million bats'

It is commonly known that bats are absolutely essential to human life. They eat lots of insects providing a better environment for humans to live in.

 So, this is not good!

The fungus thrives in the cold, damp caves where bats hibernate

A disease known as white-nose syndrome has killed approximately one million little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) in North America, say scientists.

The disease gets its name from the white fungus that grows on the bats

The research team report in the journal Science that this could drive the species to extinction in the north-eastern US in as little as 16 years. 

They examined 17 years' worth of data gathered from bat colonies.

A fungus associated with the disease was probably brought by humans into the caves where bats hibernate.

This Geomyces destructans fungus appears to thrive in the dark, damp conditions in these caves, where it grows on the bats' noses, wings and ears.

Infection makes bats restless during the winter, causing them to stir when they should be hibernating and to use up their fat reserves.

Once infection takes hold in a hibernating colony it kills, on average, 73% of the animals, the scientists have calculated.

"We went in to some caves and couldn't step on the floor because it was littered with dead bats," Thomas Kunz from Boston University told BBC News.

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