Other Mammals - Sounds Wild
Rabid Bat

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Bats and rabies

On a warm Sunday afternoon in June 2022, a woman spots a small dark creature crawling across the lawn of her apartment building in Douglas Alaska. It’s a bat, out in the daytime, which is pretty weird. Sometimes a healthy bat may be disturbed from its daytime roost, or may become disoriented and will be seen in the daytime, but will fly off and find cover. This one just laid there, so she scooped it into a small cardboard box without touching it, and called Fish and Game. A biologist collected the sick bat and sent it to Fairbanks. There, testing by wildlife veterinarian Kimberlee Beckmen revealed the bat was carrying rabies. This is the first time a bat in the Juneau area has tested positive for rabies.

Fish and Game’s Wildlife Health and Disease Surveillance Program tests about a half-dozen bats a year for rabies. In more than 50 years of testing in Alaska close to 200 bats have been examined; in all that time only six bats have tested positive for rabies. All six rabid bats were found in Southeast Alaska, either dead or exhibiting abnormal behavior.

Most rabies in Alaska occurs among arctic and red foxes in northern and western coastal areas. Dogs and other mammals are sometimes infected, and its important that people keep pets vaccinated. In this case, there was no report of any other animals or people being affected.