Bat House Forum

[gulfcoastfella]

Hi,

I was watching ABC nightly news the other night, and they aired a report stating that bats native to North America are "dying off", and that rabies-infected vampire bats from Latin America are taking their place by moving into the Southern US with the warmer temperatures. The report also stated that the first transmission of rabies from a bat to a human bite victim had been seen. The report, like most news stories these days unfortunately, had an air of sensationalism about it.

(1) I was under the impression that the diseased bats native to North America were only showing up in the Northeast.
(2) I didn't think that vampire bats attacked humans.
(3) Why would vampire bats be taking the place of North American bats? Does one affect the survivability of the other?

Any clarification would be great.

[William Bagwell]

(1) So far yes.
(2) Everything I have read is that humans are not there first choice of 'donor' but they will use us if starving. And you are correct, they do not attack. They sneak up on sleeping animals and make a small bite avoiding waking the victim, then lap up the blood as it oozes out.
(3) If and when vampire bats make it here and if and when WNS devastates most northern bats - survivors and migrants should coexist just fine in the south. And we will all still have to coexist with the idiot journalists

William

[Markcuda]

I was watching ABC nightly news the other night

Thats the problem right there

[Dave Miller]

I read the story about the first rabies death from a vampire bat in the U.S. It was a migrant worker who had been "fed upon" by a vampire bat in Mexico, then traveled to the U.S. to work in the sugar cane fields in Louisiana.

The story also said that most human rabies cases in Latin America are from vampire bats - which I find highly suspicious. I am pretty sure that outside the U.S., most people get rabies from unvaccinated dogs.

The ABC story also says

In 2009, U.S. health officials tested 30,000 bats from several dozen different species for rabies. Dr. John Williams of the department of pediatric infectious disease medicine at Vanderbilt said that 6 percent, or about one out of 15 bats, tested positive for rabies.

I did a search for this study but could not find it, not even on Dr. Williams web page, which seems very odd. I have heard about studies like this before, and the source of the bats is highly suspicious. I seriously doubt that Dr. Williams' team went out and mist-netted 30,000 bats and tested them for rabies (which I believe kills the bat). More likely, they tested (or looked up the results of tests on) 30,000 bats which people had found on the ground in their yards or houses. If you can catch a bat, it is probably sick or injured. So saying that 1 out of 15 bats (which were probably sick or injured) tested positive for rabies is extremely misleading. Hopefully someone digs into this and calls ABC on the carpet for this.

[gulfcoastfella]

I was watching ABC nightly news the other night

Thats the problem right there

Yeah, anymore I view the network news as a kind of entertainment, and get my facts somewhere else.