One way to fight a deadly pandemic: ‘yogurt for bats’

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Back at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, small cloth bags are clipped to a suspended line like socks on a clothesline. Each bag holds a bat awaiting its moment of scientific inquiry.

The headlamped researchers work intently late into the night to examine the bats quickly. They want to minimize the stress the pregnant bats endure and let them get back to eating insects as soon as possible.

“It's tough to raise a pup that's a third of your body weight!” Rensel says.

Only when the bats are released, one at a time, and they echolocate their way into the night, are the researchers able to identify the species they have been closely examining. A bat-detecting audio device identifies the bat colony as a mix of lower-pitched little browns and higher-pitched Yumas.

Later, they discover that three of the 25 bats they tested that night already had white-nose syndrome.

The researchers hoped to start spraying their bat yogurt into roosts at three locations in Washington this summer. But the microbial concoction cooked up in British Columbia was such a novelty that the research team couldn’t get the required federal permit in time to bring it across the border before the bats dispersed from their maternity roosts.

“We are trying to find a lab in the states to produce it so we don’t have to deal with border crossing in the future,” Abby Tobin said by email.

They plan to spray their probiotic into bat roosts, a first for the United States, in the spring."