These are fruit bats with an average wingspan of 3 ft. As awe inspiring as this migration is there is some poignancy to it currently. Fruit bats are THE natural reservoir of the Ebola virus that is currently slowly working it's way across the heart of Africa from west to east. In Dar we are at the terminus of this migration. This was the genesis of the awareness seminar presented this week and mentioned in the last post. We are hopeful that day does not ever arrive.
Friday, August 22, 2014
The Bats
Every night about dusk 4-5 million bats take to the air in the northern reaches of Dar-es-Salaam and fly south to overnight in a warren of caves to the south. This occurs like clockwork. Most are several miles away from our balcony but many are quite close. This is a video clip of their flight, brief but illustrative. It is a .mp4 file which plays with all Macs and on PCs with QuickTime.
These are fruit bats with an average wingspan of 3 ft. As awe inspiring as this migration is there is some poignancy to it currently. Fruit bats are THE natural reservoir of the Ebola virus that is currently slowly working it's way across the heart of Africa from west to east. In Dar we are at the terminus of this migration. This was the genesis of the awareness seminar presented this week and mentioned in the last post. We are hopeful that day does not ever arrive.
These are fruit bats with an average wingspan of 3 ft. As awe inspiring as this migration is there is some poignancy to it currently. Fruit bats are THE natural reservoir of the Ebola virus that is currently slowly working it's way across the heart of Africa from west to east. In Dar we are at the terminus of this migration. This was the genesis of the awareness seminar presented this week and mentioned in the last post. We are hopeful that day does not ever arrive.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
amazing scene. Your posts are so interesting! really giving us a sense of your everyday life. Keep up the good work. We are with Kip and Delia in the mountains enjoying the cool weather for another week.
ReplyDelete