Carol Meteyer, a scientist for the US Geological Survey, peered through a microscope at hundreds of little bats and noticed that they had managed to survive the white-nose fungus that had killed millions of other bats hibernating in caves.
However, they had succumbed to something else that had left their tiny corpses in tatters, their wings scorched and pocked with holes, 'The Washington Post' reported.
Meteyer realised that the bats were killed by their own hyper-aggressive immune systems in a struggle to fight off the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome.
Meteyer had stumbled upon a phenomenon never before seen in mammals in the wild - a similar finding had been observed only once before