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Some bats have been getting nailed by wind turbines, but not in the typical bloody mass way birds get canned. Folks at the University o Calgary collected 188 bats in Alberta… 90% of them had internal trauma without damage to their outsides. They’re lungs busted. It seems the turbines’ drop in pressure directly by them makes the batty lungs pop, similar to a diver coming to the surface too quickly after a deep dive. The bats are dying from the bends, and they don’t “see” it coming. The turbines are screwing with their echolocation.

This part of the article in NewScientist that got my attention most:

Bats eat nocturnal insects including agricultural pests, so if wind turbines affected their population levels, this could affect the rest of the local ecosystems. And the effects could even be international. “The species being killed are migrants,” says Baerwald. “If bats are killed in Canada that could have consequences for ecosystems as far away as Mexico.”

Well. Crap. One solution to the banged-up bat debacle would be to increase the minimum speed requirement to get the turbines turning.

spotted on wtf_nature.