Wind Farms Cause Bat Lungs to Explode

The growing construction of wind turbines as generators of renewable energy poses a greater danger to bats than birds, according to a new study by Canadian researchers.

Their findings may explain why bats have accounted for 60 percent of winged animals found dead around some wind farms, exhibiting no apparent injuries.


Writing in the journal Current Biology, Erin Baerwald of the University of Calgary said she found that a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure around the spinning turbines causes the bats' lungs to burst.

The phenomenon is known as a barotrauma, which is also a constant concern to scuba divers rising from the deep.

The researchers discovered that about 90 percent of bats found dead at wind farms had suffered from internal hemorrhaging caused by the effect.

Birds have more rigid lung structure than the flying mammals, allowing those that normally don't veer away from the turbines to withstand sudden drops in air pressure.

Researcher Robert Barclay added that the slow reproductive rates of bats means that the mounting losses at wind farms could risk endangerment or extinction.

That would cause a cascading effect through the environment, which depends upon bats to eat vast quantities of insects, including many crop pests.