Over the past few years, bats have been having a hard time. A fungal infection known as White Nose Syndrome is killing bats by the thousands. Now bats and researchers are getting help from an unexpected source -- Zack Snyder and the Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice production.
In the nearly five-minute long PSA below, Ben Affleck and various children explain what makes bats so important to the ecosystem and their current deadly situation with White Nose Syndrome. Bats eat more than twice their body size in insects every night, reducing insect populations. Less insects mean less pesticides that farmers need to use on their crops.
"We all take for granted that there are bats and that bats are going to be fine," Snyder says in the video. "But then as we started doing the research bats are in dire straits actually. As a movie that benefits from the bats, we thought we will build these bat habitats to raise awareness and just learn about bats generally so we know how they benefit us, because they are really important."
Snyder and the crew donated their time, and pieces of the Batman v. Superman set, in order to create and paint bat houses. You can watch various members of the crew create houses and learn new facts about bats in the video above, including Amy Adams. Each house can hold hundreds of bats, and gives bats a safe place to raise their young away from fungal infection.
It's all part of National Batweek, which runs from Oct. 26 to Nov. 1. Without bats there would be no Batman, so it's nice to see Snyder and company working to raise awareness for the creatures of the night. You can learn how to create a bat house of your own at Savebats.org, or save the bats by donating to help fund bat awareness programs and research towards curing White Nose Syndrome here.
