Portuguese Man-of-War and vampire bats attack

Could nature be starting to take its revenge on mankind? Swarms of rabid vampire bats and jellyfish have been terrorising people in Peru and Spain, while Australia is braced for its worst plague of locusts since 1973 and mosquitoes are spreading disease in Europe and India.

In Peru emergency teams have been dispatched to villages in the Amazon where an outbreak of rabies has been reported after vampire bats descended on Urakusa in the north-eastern Peruvian Amazon, near the border with Ecuador.

Four children in the local Awajun tribe have died after being bitten by the bloodsucking mammals. And more than 500 other people who were attacked by the swarm have been given a rabies vaccine.

Experts claim that the attacks on humans are down to deforestation in the Amazon. The bats usually feed on wildlife and cattle, but will bite humans when their usual sources of blood are in short supply.

Another plague that could well be caused by human activity has brought misery to hundreds of people in Spain after they were stung by jellyfish. An armada of tiny stingers, which are virtually invisible in the water, has attacked almost 1,000 people in the Mediterranean sea off the Costa Blanca in the last week.

Juan Carlos Castellanos of the Elche city tourism department said that 380 people had been stung in one day. Usually the figure is around five. "In the five or six years I have been in this job, I have never seen anything like this," he said.

The jellyfish plague is partly down to overfishing but also a lack of rain. Usually the stingers cannot come close to the shore because run-off from summer rains dilutes the salt. However, a lack of rain means that this natural barrier has been removed.

And it is not just in the east where jellyfish are causing a problem. In the north of the country, on the Atlantic coast, a further 300 people have been stung by the Portuguese Man-of-War jellyfish, a large, violet-coloured species that has long tentacles.

On the other side of the world, Australia is braced for a plague of locusts thanks to weather conditions that are ideal for the insects. Usually 80 per cent of hatchlings die, but this year, because of a warm spring, 80 per cent are expected to live. And it is reported that in parts of South Australia there are more than a billion eggs per hectare waiting to hatch.

It could be the worst invasion since 1973. And Australians are fearful that it could disrupt their sporting calendar with the Aussie Rules Grand Final and Melbourne Cup Festival possibly under threat.

There is more bad news in southern Europe where Greece is fighting an outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease West Nile virus, which has claimed two lives. And in India the organisers of the Commonwealth Games, to be held in Delhi later this year, are said to be very concerned about the possibility of an outbreak of Dengue fever - another illness carried by mosquitoes.

There has recently been talk in the media of wiping out mosquitoes for good. It looks like they won't go without a fight.

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