UK ,why are bats a protected species?

Question

UK ,why are bats a protected species?

Answer 1

Think!

What is the normal reason for an animal to be protected?

Answer 2

because they are special  

Answer 3

Because there's a risk that some varieties could die out.

Answer 4

Insect Eating Bats - The Little Brown Bat (myotis lucifugus) can eat up to 600 mosquitos an hour.  One hundred fifty Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus fuscus), can consume as many as 18 million rootworms each year.  A long eared bat called the Pallid Bat (Antrozous Pallidus) can hear the walking insects like the grasshopper, scorpions and centipede.  These long eared bats keep the walking insect population under control.

Pollenating Bats - The Lesser Long-nosed Bat (Leptonycteris Curasoae) has a long nose that fits into a flower.  These bats have a long extendible tongue that allows then to lap up the nectar and at the same time, pollen covers their nose.  Then when it flies to the next plant, it pollenates that flower with the pollen on its nose.

Fertilizer Making Bats - Bats eat large amounts of extremely rich food very fast.  Therefore, bat waste (guano), is an excellent fertilizer.

Seed Spreading Bats - Short-tailed fruit bats (Carollia Perspicillata), live in the rain forests of South and Central America.  They eat fruit and they scatter the seeds as they fly.   Sixty-thousand seeds can be spread by one short-tailed fruit bat in one night.

Drug Making Bats - The Vampire Bats (Desmodus rotundus), of Africa have really helped the medical profession.   The bats' saliva acts as an anticoagulant and has been reproduced synthetically to help heart patients.

Worldwide, bats are the major predators of night-flying insects, including mosquitoes and many crop pests.  An individual Mouse-eared Bat from North America can catch up to 600 mosquitoes in an hour!  Closer to home, it has been estimated that the colony of 300,000 bats at De Hoop Cave catch 100 tons of insects a year, including many crop pests, thus providing an important service to farmers in the Bredasdorp area.

With bats eating all those insects, this means fewer chemicals and poisons will be used on crops, and that's healthier for all of us!

Throughout the tropics the seed dispersal and pollination activities of fruit- and nectar-eating bats are vital to the survival of rain forests, with some bats acting as ‘keystone’ species in the lives of plants crucial to entire ecosystems.  Many plants bloom at night, using unique odours and special flower shapes to attract bats.  One example is the famous baobab, Adansonia digitata which bats pollinate as they approach from below in a manner likely to contact the flower’s reproductive organs, while another is the Sausage Tree Kigelia africana.

By helping to rebuild cut forests, bats are also making sure other animals continue to have homes, shelter and food.

wild bananas, breadfruit, avocados, dates, figs, peaches and mangoes.  Although many of these are now commercially cultivated, the maintenance of wild stocks is vital as a source of genetic material for breeding disease-resistant and productive varieties in the future.



More than 300 plant species in the Old World tropics alone rely on the pollinating and seed-dispersal services of bats, providing more than 450 economically important products, valued in the hundreds of million of US$ annually.  Just one, the durian fruit of Southeast Asia, sells for US$120 million each year and relies exclusively on flying foxes for pollination.



The value of tropical bats in reforestation alone is enormous.  Seeds dropped by bats account for up to 95% of forest re-growth on cleared land.

development of navigational aids for the blind, birth control and artificial insemination techniques, vaccine production and drug testing, as well as to a better understanding of low-temperature surgical procedures.

The saliva from the vampire bat  is being studied to see if someday a new medicine can be found to help people with heart problems.



In many African and Asian countries, as well as certain Pacific Islands, bats are a normal part of people’s diets.

Answer 5

Almost all the UK's bat species are endangered or on the brink of extinction. Habitat loss is the main reason for this, however human persecution also plays a part. As recently as 1991 the mouse-eared bat was declared extinct. Another issue affecting our bat species are farm insecticides. The bat currently most threatened in the UK is the Bechstein's bat (Myotis bechsteinii).

Answer 6

I'd say the simple answer to that is because bats in the UK are all at risk of becoming either endangered or extinct.

The greater horse shoe bat  population is rapidly declining and so are many other specie of bat so they are protected because they are endangered.

Answer 7

Because Bats help people. First, there are many species that can eat thousands of mosquitoes and crop destroying insects in an evening. Imagine a whole colony of bats eating away. There are others that pollinate many fruits and nuts that we enjoy.

Large Fruit Bats can spread seeds throughout the rain forest helping to plant new growth. Vampire bats have a special blood thinning chemical in their saliva that we study and use. Micro-bat's echolocation is being studied to see if we can duplicate it to assist blind people. And in addition, bat's p**p, called guano, is the best plant fertilizer known to man.