Post by L Roebuck on Oct 16, 2006 9:34:39 GMT -5
Mexican Bats Find Cross-Border Benefactors
By Ceci Connolly
MEXICO CITY -- Shortly before sundown they make their first foray, cruising up to 5,000 feet aboveground in search of mosquitoes, moths and other tasty treats. A few hours later, they return home to rest and feed their young before heading out again around midnight.
By daybreak, when Mexican free-tailed bats finally return to their cave, named Cueva de la Boca, the colony will have traveled as far as 62 miles and gobbled some 12 tons of bugs out of the skies near the U.S. border. And in cornfields from Texas to Iowa, farmers are giving thanks.
Or at least they should be.
Sure, bats are creepy. They hang upside down, squeal at high decibels and turn up in movies as blood-sucking fiends. Some even spread rabies. But, it turns out, that in the global ecosystem, bats are humanity's allies.
Every night, all night, as humans sleep, the flying mammals work feverishly. They pollinate plants such as the agave, the source of Mexico's iconic tequila. Their excrement, called guano, is a valuable fertilizer. And bats eat up to one-quarter of their body weight in insects every night, making them one of the simplest, safest, most cost-effective forms of pest control available.
Somehow, that message has not reached most people. For decades, intentionally or otherwise, property owners, hikers and sightseers have trampled habitat, dumped garbage and set fires, decimating the bat populations in many parts of the world.
"We scientists missed a chance to give farmers the right information in the right way at the right time," said A. Nelly Correa, a bat expert at the Center for Environmental Quality at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico. "Most of us were too busy giving the information to our peers in journals and not to the people who could be our partners."
Full Article
Ceci Connolly will be online at Monday, Oct. 16 at Noon ET to discuss her story
By Ceci Connolly
MEXICO CITY -- Shortly before sundown they make their first foray, cruising up to 5,000 feet aboveground in search of mosquitoes, moths and other tasty treats. A few hours later, they return home to rest and feed their young before heading out again around midnight.
By daybreak, when Mexican free-tailed bats finally return to their cave, named Cueva de la Boca, the colony will have traveled as far as 62 miles and gobbled some 12 tons of bugs out of the skies near the U.S. border. And in cornfields from Texas to Iowa, farmers are giving thanks.
Or at least they should be.
Sure, bats are creepy. They hang upside down, squeal at high decibels and turn up in movies as blood-sucking fiends. Some even spread rabies. But, it turns out, that in the global ecosystem, bats are humanity's allies.
Every night, all night, as humans sleep, the flying mammals work feverishly. They pollinate plants such as the agave, the source of Mexico's iconic tequila. Their excrement, called guano, is a valuable fertilizer. And bats eat up to one-quarter of their body weight in insects every night, making them one of the simplest, safest, most cost-effective forms of pest control available.
Somehow, that message has not reached most people. For decades, intentionally or otherwise, property owners, hikers and sightseers have trampled habitat, dumped garbage and set fires, decimating the bat populations in many parts of the world.
"We scientists missed a chance to give farmers the right information in the right way at the right time," said A. Nelly Correa, a bat expert at the Center for Environmental Quality at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico. "Most of us were too busy giving the information to our peers in journals and not to the people who could be our partners."
Full Article
Ceci Connolly will be online at Monday, Oct. 16 at Noon ET to discuss her story