Today is International Bat Appreciation Day. It was founded in USA by the Bat Conservation International.
April 17 is a chance to show our flying and mostly nocturnal friends some love. This day is designed to draw public attention to the problems of bat protection, debunk the myths associated with them and emphasize their important role in nature.
In fact, bats are a unique group of mammals. In the process of evolution, they occupied a special ecological niche: all European species of bats are nocturnal insect hunters. This is one of their most important roles in nature – the regulation of the number of insects, including pests. Bats save people billions of dollars that could be spent on pesticides.
All 28 bats of Ukraine are listed in the Red Book. They reproduce slowly, giving birth to 1-2 babies a year.
Bats are now often blamed for the cause and spread of COVID-19. But this is not the case, bats do not spread covid. The virus is transmitted from person to person. So far, there is no direct evidence that the disease came from them. They have their own coronavirus, whose genome is 96% similar to COVID-19. That’s all. American scientists have even tried to specifically infect bats with covid in the laboratory, but they did not succeed.
