Another Devastating Syndrome

I was listening to the radio the other day and learned that the North American Bat population was in danger of collapsing due to a fungal disease called White Nose Syndrome (WNS).  Whenever I hear about any of the syndromes with three letter acronyms I am reminded of things like RLS, restless leg syndrome or business acronyms like TQM, for Total Quality Management.  There is even one called TLA for Three-Letter Acronym syndrome, but I am really getting off the path now.

Anyway, this White Nose Syndrome sparked my interest not because of my obvious love and concern for bats, which are our best natural pest control against things like mosquitoes, but because WNS causes bat’s metabolism to increase.  They don’t just increase, but bats don’t hibernate as long, they fly much more, to the point of losing all their body fat and starving to death.

This sound like a horrible way to go and scientist have not found any cure, which is serious, especially if you are a bat or a farmer who needs the bats to eat the bugs that eat their crops.

See, I think that pesticide manufactures don’t really have a vested interest in finding a cure for these bats.  If we don’t have bats people will need more artificial ways to kill insects.  Sure academia can get in on finding an answer, but we all know that those ivy tower folks are very thorough and methodical, so it might take a while.

My idea to this problem is to get the giant Pharma guys to study it to see how they might turn this bat killing fungus into a diet drug.  Nothing smells like money more than a natural weight loss program and what’s more natural than fungus?  While the Galaxo and Johnson & Johnson folks are at it they can find a cure for the bats because they are going to need to learn how to control the fungus.

It would not be good if they just gave humans the fungus and we stopped needing so much sleep and needed to eat a lot more forever.  I am just looking at this as maybe a weekday drug.  I could be so much more productive five days a week and then on the weekends I could drop back into Non-White Noses Syndrome mode so that I could rest and maintain just enough body fat to stay alive, maybe like Swedish body size.

Until WNS is under control do everything you can to help keep the bat population around.  Right now the word is that it is only passed from bat to bat contact, so consider putting up some single-bat houses and not those giant bat condos that would be a breeding ground for the fungus.  Also consider adding the bat population to your nightly prayers.  I’m adding the Pharma scientists to mine.