Bats killed by wind turbines - from BBC Podcast [audio]

[hank moon]

It's an mp3 file (703 KB) - email dekoi99@gmail.com with GIMME BATS in the subject line and I'll forward to you.

[peter febb]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 132107.htm

"ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2008) — Power-generating wind turbines have long been recognized as a potentially life-threatening hazard for birds. But at most wind facilities, bats actually die in much greater numbers. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology, a Cell Press journal, on August 26th think they know why.


Ninety percent of the bats they examined after death showed signs of internal hemorrhaging consistent with trauma from the sudden drop in air pressure (a condition known as barotrauma) at turbine blades. Only about half of the bats showed any evidence of direct contact with the blades."

[Cheryl Jones]

[wyandottecaver]

I was actually a bit surprised about this. Apparently, they are saying that small drops in air pressure in the vicinity of the blades essentially causes the air in their lungs which is under "normal" pressure to violently expand thus rupturing their lungs.

At least one site has data showing bats "investigating" turbines (reposted from BCM forums)

Fascinating video of bats interacting with industrial wind turbines in WV:

http://www.bu.edu/cecb/wind/video/

I know virtually nothing about the physics of wind turbines so maybe someone could chime in....

Caves themselves are sometimes subject to rapid air pressure shifts due to weather fronts and so a bat flying from deep within a cave to the outside during a front passage would need to deal with this scenario albeit likely without as abrupt a boundary. Also, they rapidly change altitudes during flight and so again you would expect some mechanisim of dealing with air pressure differences during respiration.

Finally I would think that the area of low pressure would be fairly small and confined to the immediate vicinity of the blades which we are assuming bats *could* detect if they are trying. I know from personal experiance that bats can fly smack into a stationary or moving object they don't expect to be there ... like a caver

I could maybe see a very high speed migrating bat with its echolocation off passing very very close to a spinning blade, entering a small pocket of low pressure air and not being able to compensate quickly enough. Still seems surprising to me.