They say bat populations in many countries are experiencing alarming declines, and have launched a plan to help them.
Many species are valuable for controlling insect numbers, and are useful in other ways to farmers. And some are known to science from a few museum exhibits, with scarcely any more data available.
Zoological Society of India, in its 18 th Annual Conference accepted it as a new species. This latest development has opened a new avenue for the explorers. Various institutions recognize Chhattisgarh as a Hot-Zone for the biodiversity. The Society named the species after the team leader Dr. N P Dixit as. ’Rompoma Dixititensis’. A private study tour of
A team of experts from VYT PG Autonomous College, Durg explored a true cave at Thakurtola village of Rajnandgaon Dist. Other members of the team besides Dixit are Dr. Anil Shrivastav, Dr. Prashant Shrivastav, Dr. Anupama and Dr. Pragya Kulkarni.
The true cave is with more than two entrances and at least five channels. The local people call it as ‘Mandeep Kholi’ and channels as Indralok, Patallok, Meenabazar and Swetganga.
As per local tradition entrance in the cave is ban and is open once a year on Akshaya Tritiya. The stalagmite and stalactite formation are worshipped as Shivlinga.
The uniqueness of the bat is that it has a tail and differs from other tailed bats on various accounts.
‘This discovery has once again bought to the fore the fact that Chhattisgarh is different from other zones in various aspects and the local information and folklores should be taken up seriously and sincere effort should be made to verify.
The smallest mammal in the world is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, which weighs just two grams.
By contrast, some of Indonesia's flying foxes have wingspans of almost 1.75 metres (six feet).
The scientists stress that bats do not become entangled in people's hair, and seldom transmit disease to humans, or to other animals.
Like all mammals, they can catch rabies, though less than 0.5% of bats do so. And even they, according to IUCN, normally bite only in self-defense and pose little threat to people who do not handle them.
But when bats decline, there may be repercussions across a whole ecosystem.
Flying pest-killers
In Bracken Cave, in Texas, US, 20 million Mexican free-tail bats eat roughly 200 tones of insects every night. A single little brown bat can catch 1,200 mosquito-sized insects in an hour.
So declines in bat numbers can increase demand for chemical pesticides, with consequences for other species.
Dr Abigail Entwisted is a bat specialist at Fauna and Flora International, based in Cambridge, UK.
New species
She told BBC News Online: "It's a problem here - the mouse-eared bat became extinct in the UK three or four years ago, and the greater horseshoe bat has declined to about 10% of its historical range.
"Almost certainly, there are new bats waiting to be discovered. It's only two years since we found that the pipistrelles are two distinct species, on the basis of their echolocation frequencies."
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