On Friday, January 27th, 2012, at 21:33:02h +0000, Andy Champ wrote:

http://www.snh.org.uk/press/detail.asp?id=2104

And that link clearly states

"Bats, like other mammals can carry rabies, although in
Europe the actual virus that may be carried by them is
not classical rabies, but the closely-related European
Bat Lyssavirus (EBLV) and it is present in some British bats."

which in no way contradicts the statement I made

"And do not forget that bat bites can be fatal."

[which does not say that all bats will bite, or even
that all bat bites are fatal]

and makes your comment

"Bats suffer enough without false reports like that..."

suggesting I was making "false reports" totally unfounded.

--

"when we have 13,000 Americans living on the moon
they can petition to become a state" -- Newt Gingrich

In article , Peter Duncanson
wrote:
I have the disadvantage of not having seen the programme in question. If
at any point during it viewers were told that the polar bears being
shown were in the wild then there should also have been a mention of the
fact that some of those shown were in captivity.

I don't recall that we were told anything about how the shots were
obtained. Neither was it made clear that the apparently continuous
sequences of shots of penguins diving into the water followed by underwater
shots of them entering the water were not sequentially taken shots of the
same actual penguins taken on the same occasion, which they almost
certainly weren't. A selection of shots taken from hundreds of shots
collected ad hoc over many days would have been stitched together into a
credible sequence, because that's the only way this sort of thing can be
done, but nobody complains that it is deceptive in any way. Why the polar
bear sequence has been singled out for this accusation I do not know,
unless it was a desperate attempt to construct a story on an uneventful day
by a reporter with no idea how television programmes are made.

Rod.
--
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On Saturday, January 28th, 2012, at 09:34:06h +0000, Roderick Stewart wrote:

A selection of shots taken from hundreds of shots collected ad hoc
over many days would have been stitched together into a credible sequence

Because there is a huge difference between editing together shots of animals
taken in the wild and editing in a scene shot in a zoo facility decorated
with fake snow and giving the impression that the scene was really in
the wild.

In article , J G Miller wrote:
A selection of shots taken from hundreds of shots collected ad hoc
over many days would have been stitched together into a credible sequence

Because there is a huge difference between editing together shots of animals
taken in the wild and editing in a scene shot in a zoo facility decorated
with fake snow and giving the impression that the scene was really in
the wild.

What do you think of the timelapse tracking shot of plants growing in a
carefully staged woodland scene with CSO background that appeared in another
Attenborough series? I don't recall anybody calling this fakery.

Fundamentally, everything in television is fakery of one sort or another.
There's honest fakery and dishonest fakery, and sometimes necessary fakery to
overcome limitations of the technology without which the result might look
fake even though it isn't. As long as it's made by honest programme makers who
understand their subject matter, and who are simply using normal programme
making techniques to tell the truth about it, I don't see any cause for
criticism.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

Roderick Stewart wrote:

I don't see any cause for criticism.

There isn't. I've rarely heard such nonsense. Is life too easy, or
something, so people have to find something utterly banal to complain
about?

--
SteveT

On 28/01/2012 00:46, J G Miller wrote:
suggesting I was making "false reports" totally unfounded.

My apologies. In my defence I should make it clear that no-one has ever
died from rabies from a bat in the UK (this being a UK group this is
relevant) and that the related lyssavirus has killed one person only in
the UK.

Andy

On Sunday, January 29th, 2012, at 16:43:45h +0000, Andy Champ wrote:

In my defence I should make it clear that no-one has ever
died from rabies from a bat in the UK

Not in *recent* medical history less than 80 years old.

One should remember that

http://www.thelancet.COM/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)66769-4/fulltext

QUOTE

rabies was endemic in the UK throughout the 18th and 19th centuries

UNQUOTE

and that rabies was only finally eradicated from the British Isles in 1922.

Unless you are using the term "UK" in the strict sense of
the UKofGB&NI which has only existed since 1922, after rabies
had been eradicated, then your your statement that no-one has
ever died from rabies from a bat in the [territories currently
occupied by the] UKofGB&NI is therefore improbable

According to http://www.newton.dep.anl.GOV/natbltn/700-799/nb719.htm

QUOTE

Rabies is one of nature's ways to curb overpopulation.

UNQUOTE

so perhaps those in this newsgroup who continue to urge the culling
of the human population of the UKofGB&NI, the reintroduction of
the disease could be one way to solve the problem?