So this project is what i ended up in the emergency room last week for. i work as an environmental educator (for 10 more days, then field biologist in pennsylvania) and i'm teaching a program about bats at Reinstein Woods on friday evening (still room to register).

i digress. I built 24 of these bat boxes and I'm giving away one to each family that comes. one will be given to the company that basically donated all the lumber and another will be a model for future programs and etc. This is the finished one...that i think is totally frickin awesome.

anyways bats are dying at an incredible rate due to a disease called white nose syndrome. over a million bats have been killed since it was discovered in howe's caverns in albany in 2006. this is worse than any disease you've ever heard of concerning wildlife put together and multiplied by 2. bad news bears. if you want to know more PM me or something.

don't take this the wrong way, pensfan, but, sorry, but you know a whole lot of wrong. let me just tweak some stuff for you.

a bat only weighs a few ounces. the most active bat in this entire region (here to maine to virginia to like illinois) is the little brown bat. this bat will eat around 1000 insects an hour every night. an average bug weighs about 4 milligrams, meaning they eat about 4 grams of bugs an hour. over one night, you're looking at roughly 15-20 grams of bugs.

the white nose syndrome interrupts what people would call a bat's hibernation. however, bats don't hibernate, they enter a very deep and unique state of torpor, which is pretty different. a bat's heart rate is near 1000 beats per minute active, but in this torpor bats go 10-15 beats per minute.

what no one knows is the next step. bats with white nose syndrome wake up early cause they've burned through their fat reserves. so they are out looking for sustenance in february and march and there aren't any bugs around. thus, we have thousands of bats starving to death. there have been several instances where more than 30,000 bats have been found dead in one hibernacula (where a group congregates to enter that hibernation).

we know why they're dying, but not why they wake up. i have a theory which i am putting into a grant to send to schools so i can research it for my master's. i think that the bat's immune system is fighting this fungus and thus the heart rate may increase 8-9 beats per minutes and that is just enough to where over a four month period, the bat burns through it's fat reserves a month before it should. but that's my theory.

WNS sounds like a horrible problem, like everyone else though I don't know much about it because we don't have it here in North Carolina and in Florida. I really hope you get the grant and can help stop this. Just curious, are the boxes used to help with WNS, or just to help educate the public about bats in general?

Bat boxes are used to control the insect population, at a camp ground for example. You're supposed to position the box facing West so the sun doesn't get in, and up in a tree to avoid predators. At night they come out and clean house, no need for bug zappers. Then they go home and crash like party animals. They are pretty cool IMO.

Just saw this thread...sorry for the bump.
That bat box is pretty badass. Is that a standard design?
Are plans available on the intertubes?

This is the first I've heard of WNS...sounds pretty nasty. Is it a native disease or was it introduced to the population somehow?

Good luck with your theory, it certainly makes sense to me. But why are they getting this fungus in the first place? Why now?

WNS sounds like a horrible problem, like everyone else though I don't know much about it because we don't have it here in North Carolina and in Florida. I really hope you get the grant and can help stop this. Just curious, are the boxes used to help with WNS, or just to help educate the public about bats in general?

i want a bat box, but will a bat actually use it?

the bat box is sort of standard...i've made some changes to generation 1 models to incorporate what i know of bat ecology. they are pretty similar overall to the more modern designs. lots of designs for different types are available online, but i would stay away from any not on bat conservation sites, like batcon.org. unfortunately, there is far more of a science to bat boxes than bird houses. i can send you my plans if you want.

we're still not entirely sure whether white nose was introduced from europe or it's native. it is an entirely new species of fungus (Geomyces destructans) that is unique in that it's best growth is at about 55 degrees- the temperature of most caves. it is also extremely hardy, shown to survive on clothes after a one hour, high temperature dryer cycle. whether it is truly viable at that point is a point of debate.



based on the distribution map (last updated this week) you can see how it has progressed extensively fast and stuff. the bats do pass it to one another, but to my eye and data inference, cavers have transported it here and there on occasion. this is most easily seem in the newest sighting in oklahoma. it's a shame that WNS made it that far west...i hope it gets contained by the mountains.

one particular genus seems to be extra susceptible to it, the Myotis, or mouse-eared bats. this is unfortunate because those bats made up a huge percentage of our bats in the northeast.



this picture is one of the first and most iconic pictures of white nose syndrome. these are our little brown bats (Myotis lucifgus). recently, cavers and researchers in europe have found bats with the white muzzle, but the bats have been unaffected. it's such a new discovery, however, that we don't know whether it's just being introduced or it's been around and these bats have some resistance to it. sidebar: europe has almost no bats, and hardly any research at all with bats. i believe that most of them died in the world wars.

so i guess all in all, we don't really know if it is native or introduced, only that it just suddenly appeared and it's spreading worse than any pandemic ever.



like i said just above, we're not sure whether something got introduced or this new fungus species just came around and fully evolved in the last couple years.



Actually, parts of carolina do have it. you probably haven't heard of it because it isn't really talked about unless it's in scientific journal or something. this is mostly to do with the dozens of misconceptions of bats. and the misunderstandings.

the bat boxes just are a gesture of kindness really. give them a place to stay and eat and you're doing as much for the bats as anyone can do at this point. plus it's environmentally friendly insect control. less deet, less pesticide, and less insecticide means happier healthier people. they are, however, like anything visual and tactual, great education tools.



sure. if you have water in the vicinity and you have bugs, bats will be there. it might not be this year, it might not be next year, but there are very few cavities that bats don't use. if you site it correctly, you're in good shape. i can mail you a kit if you send me money for shipping and $5 donation for the company i work for.


ANNNNNNND this is post 300, making me a brawler. BOOSH FOR AWESOME POST

i want a bat box, but will a bat actually use it?

OMG Squanto. I used to have bon fires back there and it was fucking torture. Wish I had known about bat boxes back then.

The back of my property is a creek, and a bug heaven. One of the first things I did was get a bat box up on my shed. I'm hoping some move in within a couple years; it'll be a smorgasbord for them!!

I eventually want to narrow the channel in the creek a little bit to make the water move faster through there