Bats' Nemesis—Wind Turbines

Bats are known to be some of the world's saviest aerial acrobats. Using their mysterious sonar system and shape-shifting wings, bats adeptly swerve and swoop and dive in flight to avoid collisions with both stable and moving objects. And yet bats stand no chance against a 200-meter high wind turbine with blades the length of a football field, spinning at speeds up to 275 km per hour. Even if their tiny bodies can avoid a blunt force collision with one of these merciless steel blasts, just the act of drawing near to a wind turbine may nonetheless expose bats to jarring air pressure changes that cause fatal lung damage. This is the main reason why bat carcasses can be found scattered beneath wind turbines at locations across the world, reports Kenneth Richard. (1)