"Something unusual rained down on residents of Queensland, Australia, over the weekend. In a bizarre incident, thousands of bats reportedly fell from the sky in the northeastern state. While the mass deaths may seem baffling, it appears Australia's heat wave is to blame."

"The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals confirmed that about 100,000 bats recently died as the likely result of extreme heat in the region, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

'The heatwave was basically a catastrophe for all the bat colonies in southeast Queensland,' RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty told ABC. 'That's obviously going to have a pretty disturbing impact on those colonies and those colonies are vital to our ecosystem.'"

The Huffington Post had the story January 8, 2014. [2]