More than 200 'Boiled' Bats Fall from Sky in Australian Heat Wave

More than 200 bats have lost their lives to southern Australia's ongoing heat wave.

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"They basically boil," Kate Ryan, the colony manager for the Campbelltown bats, told the newspaper. "It affects their brain — their brain just fries and they become incoherent." [Watch for Falling Iguanas! Bomb Cyclone Drops Frozen Lizards]

More than 200 bats have lost their lives to southern Australia's ongoing heat wave.

As temperatures rose to 111.5 degrees Fahrenheit (44.2 degrees Celsius) in Campbelltown in the Australian state of New South Wales, a colony of flying fox bats that lives near the town's train station felt the effects. Volunteers struggled to rescue the heat-stricken bats, according to the Campbelltown-Macarthur Advertiser, but at least 204 individual animals, mostly babies, died.

"They basically boil," Kate Ryan, the colony manager for the Campbelltown bats, told the newspaper. "It affects their brain — their brain just fries and they become incoherent." [Watch for Falling Iguanas! Bomb Cyclone Drops Frozen Lizards]

Climate backdrop

Australia is no stranger to extreme heat, but climate change is tilting the odds toward more heat waves, said Gerald Meehl, the head of the climate change research section at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

"They're occurring under the framework of background temperatures being warmer, so a naturally occurring heat wave becomes more intense," Meehl told Live Science.

In the first decade of the 21st century, there were two daily maximum temperature records set for every daily minimum temperature record, Meehl said. In other words, heat records outpaced cold records two to one. The ratio is only growing, Meehl said: In 2017, daily heat records outpaced daily cold records five to one.

"That's projected to continue to increase," Meehl said. Australia's current heat wave echoes a similar one the continent experienced in 2013. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, that summer set records for the warmest September to March, the hottest summer, the hottest month and the hottest day.