MONTGOMERY COUNTY, TENN.
Just in time for Halloween, the world's first artificial bat cave is expecting the arrival of its first winged visitors.
The nearly 80-foot-long concrete chamber was built to protect bats against white nose syndrome, a disease named for a white fungus that infects the skin of the muzzle, ears and wings of hibernating bats.
In the six years since bats with the syndrome were discovered dead or dying in a cave near Albany, N.Y., more than 5 million infected animals from seven species have died, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In the northeastern United States, 85 percent of hibernating bats have died from the disease, which has spread rapidly through Canada and New England into the Mid-Atlantic and through most of Appalachia.
White nose syndrome is "unlike anything we've ever seen," said Ann Froschauer, a spokeswoman for the Wildlife Service. Scientists have been confounded by the rapid spread of the disease and its mortality rate. This fungus is particularly hard to treat because it invades deeper layers of the skin than most other fungi that attack mammals. Such a novel affliction, Froschauer said, requires novel strategies for blocking it without harming other cave life.
"Natural caves have lots of good fungi, amphibians and reptiles, insects and arthropods and isopods that live inside, so you can't go in and hose them down with bleach to kill everything in there," Froschauer said.
'Crazy' idea embraced
