It's October, which means that bats are once again having their
annual star turn, popping up on classroom bulletin boards and
store windows across America. But this year, actual living bats
in North America aren't so abundant. They are being decimated by
a deadly health epidemic. The disease causing this die-off is
called white-nose syndrome, and it is infecting hibernating bat
populations across the Eastern states. In the four years since
it was first detected, white-nose syndrome has spread quickly
from a cave in upstate New York, the epicenter, to 16 states and
four Canadian provinces. It has killed more than 1 million bats.
Biologists in New York first started to notice dead and dying
bats with unusual symptoms in 2007. Named for a fuzzy white
fungus that often grows on the muzzles, wings and tail membranes
of infected bats, white-nose syndrome had never been seen in
North America. As winter wore on, more and more bats were
affected by the disease, and biologists watched helplessly as
the bats prematurely