Orange bats sold as home décor threaten species: Study
- US vendors accounted for 62% of dead bat décor on Amazon, eBay and Etsy
- Study co-author: Bats not from US; sourced from Asia and used as décor
- Researchers have called for enhanced species protection of painted woolly bats
Painted woolly bat photo by Center for Biological Diversity
Testing on staging11
.
FILE – The marquee of the Egyptian Theatre appears during the Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 28, 2020, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File) 
This shows a general view of a Great Northern railway train at Hunt’s Cross station in Liverpool, England amid reports of widespread IT outages affecting airlines, broadcasters and banks, Friday, July 19, 2024. (Peter Byrne/PA via AP) 
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives for the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, Thursday, July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) 
FILE – A view of the Peace Palace, which houses the International Court of Justice, or World Court, in The Hague, Netherlands, on Jan. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Patrick Post, File) 
FILE – Allen Weisselberg, a former longtime executive in Donald Trump’s real estate empire, arrives at the court in New York, Wednesday, April. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
(NewsNation) — An orange bat species is under threat due to the sale of stuffed and mounted specimens as home decor, researchers report.
The “near threatened” kerivoula picta, or painted woolly bat, species are being sold as jewelry, Halloween decorations and jarred curios, according to a study published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research.
Over 12 weeks in 2022, researchers with the International Union for Conservation of Nature Bat Trade Working Group found 856 listings for dead bat décor on Amazon, eBay and Etsy, including 215 for painted woolly bats. U.S. vendors accounted for 62% of these listings, per the study.
Tennessee led the sales of painted woolly bats, accounting for 45% of the listing, followed by Illinois, California and Florida, which together made up 27.5% of the listings.
“These bats are not from the United States, but they’re being sourced from across Asia and then brought here and used as décor. With this study, we hope to raise awareness and propel the conservation of this species,” said Nistara Randhawa, a co-leading author and University of California Davis data scientist and epidemiologist.
Known for their orange and black wings, painted woolly bats are not bred in captivity, meaning all the bats sold are taken from the wild. Researchers believe this trade is unsustainable due to the slow reproductive rate of painted woolly bats.
For the study, researchers used data mining and manual data collection to analyze and quantify the online bat trade on U.S.-based eBay, Etsy and Amazon websites during the 2022 Halloween and Christmas seasons.
Researchers are also concerned about the potential for bat trade to spread diseases to healthy bat populations and humans. The Center and Monitor filed a legal petition in May asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect painted woolly bats under the Endangered Species Act.