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Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: Jan 27, 2012 2:53 pm
by Cheryl Jones
BEIRUT: The largest single colony of fruit bats in the Middle East, residing in a cave in the Akkar region of north Lebanon, was last weekend largely destroyed by vandals, with thousands of bats killed.

Dr. Mounir Abi-Said, founder of Animals Encounter, and a professor at the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese University, conducted a routine check on the colony as part of research into the highly endangered animal begun in 2007.

“The cave was full of shotgun pellets, spent fireworks and AK-47 bullet casings and there was evidence that fires had been started in the cave,” Abi-Said told The Daily Star.

Read on
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Enviro ... z1kgelTY3d

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: Jan 27, 2012 3:24 pm
by BrianC
Very sad indeed that someone want's bats dead. Surely making information that the good bats do available to the populous would be helpful, but Abi-Said Informed the reader that caving is one of the reasons that bats there are endangered, then ask's for help from the caving organisations, go figure. Sound familiar?

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: Feb 13, 2012 10:05 pm
by Jon
Bat's, 99 & 44/100 % of people have nothing in THEIR life that they can bitch about bats. Yet most are freaked out by them. If bats were people, they would be the most oppressed race of all time. Damn, they eat nasty biting bugs, they pollinate beautiful flowers and tasty food. Guano, what's not to love?

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: Feb 14, 2012 6:53 am
by GroundquestMSA
Jon wrote:If bats were people, they would be the most oppressed race of all time.


Because bats have been driven to near extinction for greedy purposes, right? Like the natives of Tasmania, or the Carribean Islands, or many N. and S. American regions and so on and so on?

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: May 16, 2012 8:30 pm
by Larry E. Matthews
These were Fruit Bats, so I'll bet some local farmers were pissed that the bats had eaten some of their fruit. How to solve the problem? Kill those damn bats !!!

Same thing happened here in the US perhaps 100 years ago. The Carolina Parakeet had a fondness for fruit, so the farmers killed them, too. They were easy to kill, since they lived in small colonies in hollow trees.

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: May 17, 2012 8:24 am
by Phil Winkler
I saw a stat once that something like 80% of the plants below the Equator are pollinated by bats. There are easily more species of bats in the world then anything else, too, as I recall. Several hundred?

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: May 17, 2012 9:04 am
by LukeM
Phil Winkler wrote:I saw a stat once that something like 80% of the plants below the Equator are pollinated by bats. There are easily more species of bats in the world then anything else, too, as I recall. Several hundred?


I was curious about this so I did some searching and it looks like bats have the second highest number of species of any mammal outside of rodents. About 925 species, or 25% of all mammal species. (http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Chiroptera.html)

I'm not sure about 80% of all plants below the equator being pollinated by bats simply because there are so many plants that they would have no interest in. Maybe 80% of all fruit-bearing plants below the equator?

And about this news, I really hope that some of the bats simply escaped to other places.

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: May 17, 2012 3:21 pm
by Phil Winkler
Luke, Fruit sounds right as does the species thing. I read those stats a long time ago. Still pretty interesting, tho.

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: Jan 24, 2013 11:28 am
by Crash Kennedy
There are actually more than 1250 species of bats. The 925 figure is very old.

BCI's website always has some of the most up-to-date info on bats. www.batcon.org

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: Feb 6, 2013 9:10 pm
by eyecave
humans are stupid.... :clap: ....they are also very very selfish in their every single behavior... :laughing: ....most of us hide that very well....some better than others but there are a few of us incapable of anything except stupidity and selfish behavior.... :sadbanana: ..the intelligent and average can be reached by knowledge to a point.....they are still very susceptible to parrot behavior because they are still stupid......

unfortunately the ones considered stupid by our stupid rating group are without hope on their own...they are susceptible to impulsive types of behavior...especially those involving violence or violent types of actions.....hence repetitive visits to a cave filled with living and stationary targets...........left alone dangerous to society.....but, they are also very easy to control.....and if the controls appear as a normal part of society they will parrot any behavior or thought being presented to them as normal.....

what i would actually like to do is put a killer robot in all bat caves that would only activate after certain bat actions......i would also make it a hair trigger device......designed to discourage those "acceptable" hibernation disturbances we call doctoral research personnel.... :roll: .

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: May 20, 2013 1:17 am
by kittenz1
I had not heard this before now and am so dismayed! I travel here to Lebanon every year and each time I try to educate everyone I can about the bats here and how they help us. So many people here do not even believe there are bats in Lebanon. I have pointed out many and have educated a few people but this kind of word travels slowly in a place where they are far more concerned about war and struggling to regain their country and government than with the local ecosystem. I get so frustrated when I'm here.

I had been wondering where the huge fruit bat that frequented our fig trees had gone the past couple of years and now I fear I may have my answer. He was amazing, with a wingspan of at least 5 feet. It took me over three years to convince the family here that he was indeed a bat and not a large bird that for some reason liked to fly at night and drop fig casings on the cars.

I will double my efforts while here from now on in hopes that it may do some small good and hopefully reach the right ears to help defend the beautiful bats that reside in the numerous caves and trees here. Thank you for posting this and I just wish I had joined the forum and seen it sooner.

Sincerely,
Kat

Re: Vandals kill thousands of fruit bats

PostPosted: May 20, 2013 2:09 am
by kittenz1
Me again - sorry for two replies.

I have just verified with the family here in Lebanon that none of them heard about this so I have contacted the LBC network, which is the largest news network in Lebanon, and the most watched by Lebanese people not only here but around the world, with the following:

"Hi. I don't know if you covered this when it happened: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Enviro ... z1kgelTY3d but if you missed it, this would be a great thing to tell people about and use it to teach the people of Lebanon how valuable your bats are and why not to kill them.

I travel here every year for at least one month with my husband to visit our family and I always enjoy looking at all the beautiful wild life, plants and flowers, especially in the Mont Lebanon region. I would love to see the people here take a more active role in preserving the beauty and diverse wildlife that is and makes Lebanon an even better country and place to visit. Without your bats, like your honey bees, all your plants, all your flowers, your vineyards and your fruit trees will die off and cease to exist. They are an absolute necessity to your food as well as your beauty. The fruit bats like the ones that were killed pollinate your fruit trees, especially your figs and pomegranates and you need them. Your smaller bats eat an amazing number of insects, especially mosquitoes every night. One bat will eat it's own weight in insects every evening.

Too many Lebanese are still afraid and misinformed about bats and how necessary they are. They think they are bad omens, carry rabies and all sorts of bad things, but none of this is true. For more information on bats, please visit Bat Conservation International at http://www.batcon.org/ - there you will find a lot of great information about bats around the world and what they do for us.

Please inform the Lebanese people so they will stop killing the bats here. It is a very sad thing when humans kill our of fear or misinformation.

One more thing about bats - they mate for life. If you kill one, its mate will be alone in most species and never claim another mate. They are the only flying mammal in the world and do not attack humans, especially the species we have in Lebanon.

Thank you for your time and my apologies if you have already covered this information. I hope I have provided you with some newsworthy items and a way to help all our beautiful country of Lebanon. "

There is a big chance they will do a news story on this now. They did not in the past according to what I could find in their records. If they cover this, and they love this kind of story since it doesn't happen a whole lot over here, so I bet they will, most of the country will see it and hopefully it will help. It is the best thing I could do for the bats here and I hope it does the trick. From what I've been told by the family here, more and more people are becoming aware of the wildlife here, especially the bats, and they still think they are "bad omens" of all things. They are very superstitious. Others still believe they carry rabies of course.

Cross your fingers this does the trick and lets the bats here live more peacefully. Lebanon is not a bad country and most of the people here do care but have no idea what to do or how to do it and no idea of where to find the information, so maybe this will help them. There are several new groups forming every day here to protect and preserve the wildlife and ecology of the country and they will jump on this too if they know about it and hear it from a source they trust.

Thank you
Kat