Imagine a world without bats… It could be if a Ball State Professor's prediction comes true. Fungus may cause the extinction of some bat species within 20 years… So says Ball State bat expert Timothy Carter. The disease is known as white-nose syndrome, after the white fungal patches that appear on the nose and wings of some infected bats. He believes the fungus, which was first identified in New York in 2006, has killed millions of bats throughout the eastern states and is now spread across the eastern United States as well as to a few eastern Canadian provinces. The U.S. Forest Service has closed thousands of caves and mines in 33 states in an effort to control the fungus.
