Etsy and eBay Are Promoting Useless Bats and Scientists Are Involved

Useless bats preserved with their wings stretched out and match for hair barrettes at the moment are being bought on Ebay and Etsy on-line.

Nationwide Geographic reported that final October alone, over 500 listings of useless bats appeared on Etsy and 71 on eBay and some on different platforms.

Whereas most of the ads talked about Halloween, some listed the useless bats as Christmas items, based on a brand new, unpublished examine from the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature bat analysis group that Joanna Coleman, a bat specialist, and professor, co-leads.

Coleman mentioned that it’s disturbing and that many bats ‘reproduce slowly’ which makes them susceptible to overexploitation. Whereas bats are sometimes bought as framed specimens, within the final 12 months, searches for issues like “noticed bat hats, barrettes, and garter belts” have gone up.

Over 130 adverts from final 12 months featured painted woolly bats, and it’s doable that 117 different postings have been for these bats, too, Nistara Randhawa says. Randhawa is a knowledge scientist on the College of California Davis who has been looking out by means of e-commerce platforms to search out listings of painted woolly bats.

Whereas it’s not clear who’s doing the looking, taxidermy, and promoting, it’s clear that this can be a big problem. Painted woolly bats are usually not bred commercially, and so they reside alone or with household items of three throughout a part of the 12 months, Nationwide Geographic reported.

The crew is now working to search out out if the adverts on-line have been for painted wooly bats or different bat species, and so they have been simply recognized incorrectly.

Most individuals assume that bats are terrifying, bloodthirsty animals. This false impression largely comes from fictional movies that includes bats or bat-like characters, however due to these imaginary portrayals of bats, these creatures get a reasonably unhealthy rap. What most individuals don’t know is that bats play a vital position in sustaining the steadiness of our ecosystem. These animals assist to pollinate a big portion of our meals provide and management mosquito populations.

Sadly, bat populations are dwindling on account of habitat loss and the unfold of a illness known as white-nose syndrome. With out bats, almost half of the fruits we get pleasure from wouldn’t exist, and bug populations can be uncontrolled. Fortunately, many organizations are working to assist the bat inhabitants get well.

Signal this petition to save lots of the bats!

This text by Hailey Kanowsky was first revealed by OneGreenPlanet on 14 February 2023. 

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