Probiotic and vaccine treatments for white-nose syndrome in bats are showing promising results in field trials, offering hope for affected populations.
Bats dying from white-nose syndrome experience weeks of suffering from the metabolic disruption caused by repeated arousal from torpor. Effective treatment could prevent this suffering in millions of individual bats annually. The development of probiotic sprays that can be applied to cave entrances represents a major welfare advance if they prove effective at scale.