The Florida bonneted bat, originally identified from an 11,700-year-old fossil in 1932, was formally listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) as a candidate for the Endangered Species List. The agency said the entire species appears to number less than a few hundred individuals, all of them in South Florida....more

The aerial dogfights between bats and night-flying insects have led to an array of predator-prey interactions. Bats use echolocation to find and attack, while insects evolved ultrasonic hearing to monitor echolocation calls in time for evasive maneuvers. Gleaning bats, however, are a different story. They snatch their prey off plants, rocks and other surfaces and use quieter...more

With White-nose Syndrome threatening the future of bat species in the northeastern United Sates, and potentially across the continent, the National Zoo is about to create a captive colony to protect endangered Virginia big-eared bats from extinction, the Scripps Howard News Service reports.

The “insurance” colony by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park is being funded by $322,000 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The grant is one of six, totaling $800,000, that the Service has awarded for research “to explore the...more