Wards Natural Science, a popular science company used by teachers, contributes to the decimation of wild bat colonies by collecting healthy wild bats and selling them as” educational specimens.” We purchased one of these products and discovered the label was shared by both Wards and Science Kit & Boreal Laboratories. Ward’s Natural Science and its affiliates, Edmund Scientific, Science Kit, X-treme Geek, and Boreal Laboratories, provide science education materials for elementary through college classrooms. Wards is a division of VWR International.
On gross necropsy we discovered this bat, a female Mexican free-tail, to be plump, healthy and lactating. She had a full stomach and intestines and was also a nursing mother. By all appearances (and later confirmed by Wards Scientific) this bat had been collected live and then killed, leaving behind a starving pup. This bat had a potential life span of 25 to 40 years in the wild and was capable of eating hundreds of millions of insects during her lifetime. She was sold for $6.25.
