For more than 120 years of existence in International cricket, the bat
has undergone lots of changes – perhaps
there has not been significant change in the grip, the quality of willow but
the weight, perceived quality and weight have.
Present day bats held by star batsmen display not manufacturers’ names
but mostly the sponsors on the bats. There are many and varied manufacturers
such as : Symonds, Slazenger, Gunn & Moore, Gray Nichols, Puma, BDM, MRF
and more….. those days – there were oil and non-oil bats -there
were stories of seasoning and oiling the oil bats. At one point time, there
were reports that Sunil Gavaskar’s bat had some small pint holes on the back
side of the bat which aided him when he drove the ball. The bats of English
willow were expertly pressed and there would be procedures of oiling with
linseed oil and knocking them over.
Modern bats are usually machine made, the shape of bats have remained
in the present form for too long. Those
days Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards and Sandip Patil used heavier bats – now there
are many who wield the willow like a bludgeon – resultantly, even a shot not
hit in the sweet spot disappears into the crowd, making the life of spinners
miserable. This is not about Cricket but about bats – and their unusual
killer !
Bats are mammals of the
order Chiroptera, whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only
mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other
mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos,
can only glide for short distances. Bats do not flap their entire forelimbs, as
birds do, but instead flap their spread-out digits. Bats are the second largest order of mammals
(after the rodents), representing about 20% of all classified mammal species
worldwide. About 70% of bat species are
insectivores. Most of the rest are frugivores, or fruit eaters ~ there is
common misconception that they are vampires, feeding on blood !
Bats are present
throughout most of the world, performing vital ecological roles of pollinating
flowers and dispersing fruit seeds. Many tropical plant species depend entirely
on bats for the distribution of their seeds. Bats are economically important,
as they consume insect pests, reducing the need for pesticides. There are many different predators that can
create issues for bats. What could consume them really depends on the location
where they are at. The size of different species also affects what types of
problems they may encounter with different predators.
Other types of flying animals find the bat to be a delicious meal.
They include owls and hawks. Snakes are a common predator of bats that consume
fruits. The snakes can easily blend into the surroundings of the trees and
plants where such fruits grow. In some Western World, raccoons and weasels have
been identified as bat predators. In some areas where bats live in trees, there
have been reports of house cats capturing them.
For all our appliances and
facilities, we use electric power. In our country, mostly the electricity is
transmitted through overhead power lines.
There are transformers which supply the domestic current with which most
of our devices work. Electricity
generation is the process of generating electric energy from other forms of
energy. Besides the conventional source
of electric generation, there is renewable source of energy – the Wind
mills. Tamilnadu has hundreds of
windmills nearer Nagercoil and near Coimbatore.
Windmill is a machine that converts the wind energy into electric
energy. Also called wind turbine and
WEG [wind electricity generator] – they convert the kinetic energy from the
wind into mechanical energy. The
windmills here generally have three blades and the blade acts much like an airplane wing.
~ and
a recent report in Daily Mail reports that these turbines are deadly to bats as
they create same air currents as trees, so they fly too close. It is reported that over 600,000 bats were killed by wind turbines in
the U.S. in 2012. In the UK bats numbers dropped by 54 per cent in areas they
were put up. Endangered bats are being killed by wind turbine blades because
the air currents are similar to those near tall trees, a study shows. It’s
feared the legally protected mammals are dying while hunting insects that are
attracted by the heat generated by the spinning blades.
The nocturnal creatures
are welcomed by farmers across the world as they eat large numbers of insects
that usually damage crops. This reduces the amount that farmers have to spend
on pesticides and saves millions of new plants that could be obliterated by the
creepy crawlies. The researchers say tree-roosting bats suffer higher fatality
rates at the windmill sites than other
species and peak during low wind conditions. They used thermal surveillance
cameras situated on the ground, near-infrared video, acoustic detectors and
radar to monitor bat behaviour at a wind farm in Indiana over several months. During
periods of low wind more bats were sighted near turbines than during gales. The
frequency with which they approached from a downwind direction increased with
increasing wind speeds - but only when the blades turned slower than normal. The results published in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences suggest bats orient toward turbines by sensing air
currents.
Trees provide shelter and
attract a diverse range of insect species for bats to feed on. Since bats are
not able to bore holes or make nests they use whatever gaps are available. The
researchers believe tree-roosting bats are attracted to turbines because air
currents are similar to those around tall trees that harbour insects on their
downwind sides or provide sheltered roosting sites.
Nature is
the best teacher, and perhaps over a period of time, bats will learn another
trick of survival, to keep away from the wind turbines.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
24th Oct 2014.
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