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Bats In General
*The only other order having more species than bats (Chiroptera) are
rodents (Rodentia).
*There are nearly 1,000 kinds of bats found on every continent except
Antarctica.
*Bats can be divided into 2 separate groups - Megabats (flying foxes)
and Microbats.
*90% of all bats are microbats and weigh less than one ounce.
*Megabats can only be found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
*A baby bat is called a pup.
*A group of bats is called a colony, or camp.
*There are 40 species of bats in the United States, and 18 in Colorado.
Vampire
Bat-Desmodus rotundus
Found only in South America. Habitat: tropical rainforests and
subtropical regions.
Total body length is only 3.5 inches! Weight 1 oz. 8-10
razor sharp teeth - all in the front of the mouth. 8” wingspan.
Able to stand on hind legs, and unlike many bats can walk, hop, run
and climb.
Has one baby at a time, which is born completely blind
Roosts individually or in colonies of up to thousands of bats.
Lives 9 years in the wild, 20 years in captivity.
Will share food with orphaned pups or sick bats, if they don’t eat
for 2 days it will die.
Cows and other domestic animals are their main source of blood.
Humans do not smell good to bats! When they bite, they make a very
shallow cut that does not hurt or disturb their sleeping victim.
Only drink 8 teaspoons of blood or less a night.
Vampire bats can carry rabies, but it is rare.
Indian
Flying Fox - Pteropus giganteus
Found on many islands in India, Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka, and others
near the Indian Ocean.
Habitat is forests and swamps. It is essential for this bat to
be near a large body of water.
Body length is 9”. Females weigh 2 pounds, males can weigh from
2.8-3.5 pounds. Wingspan = 5.5 feet. No tail.
Have very large well-developed eyes, but can only see in black and
white.
Spends most of the night feeding, returning to their roost at 4a.m.
Does not echolocate, but strong sense of smell guides them to fruit.
During hot weather, these bats fan themselves with their wings to stay
cool.
The first place they go to when feeding is the rotten, squishy fruit!
This helps clean the trees and keeps away fruit flies.
Their mouth is like a juicer: they squish fruit around in their mouth
and only swallow the juice and pulp. They spit out the seeds, and
help replant the forest.
Pups are carried by their mothers at the age of 6-7 weeks, and can
fly on their own at 11 weeks.
Their favorite foods are the mushy, smelly fruit - mangoes, bananas,
papayas, figs, flowers, and some insects.
According to Indian folk medicine, a wing bone from a flying fox tied
to the ankle with a tail hair from a black cow results in painless childbirth.
Island
Flying Fox or Variable Flying Fox - Pteropus hypomelanus
Occurs only on small islands from Bay of Bengal to New Guinea and Solomon
Islands
This is the smallest of the 63 species of flying fox - males weigh
1-2 pounds. Body length 10-16”, wingspan 3.5-4 feet.
Have excellent eyesight and keen sense of smell -which helps them search
for fruit and nectar.
May travel 20 miles in search of food. Can be very destructive
to plants.
These animals are essential to the survival of rainforests: up to 40%
of tree species depend of these bats for seed dispursal or pollination.
Pups may weigh 10% of mother’s body weight (if that were a human, our
babies could weigh 15 pounds!)
In some cultures, these bats are hunted for food.
Straw-Colored
Fruit Bat - Eidolon helvum
Habitat is the forests and mountains of Southwestern Arabian Peninsula,
forests and savannah zones of Africa south of the Sahara and Madagascar.
Body length is 5.5-8.5”. Short tail, wingspan up to 2.5
feet.
These bats can not echolocate, but find food though vision and sense
of smell.
They feed primarily on fruit, and are seed dispursers.
Live in huge colonies numbering 100,000 to 1,000,000 individuals and
can be very noisy and restless during the daytime.
Hunted by humans in some areas, protected in others.
What Bats Eat---
Carnivores: Bats that eat other animals have large bodies and
broad wings to be able to pick up their prey. Frogs, lizards, mice,
birds, scorpions, and insects are some examples of what a carnivorous bat
might eat.
Piscivore: A bat that eats fish is a piscivore.
These bats have large bodies and huge feet, and oily fur that is water
repellent. Fish eating bats are able to detect a fin sticking out
of the water a mere millimeter!
Sanguivore: This is a bat that drinks blood. The three
vampire bats are all found in South America. Two species only drink
the blood of birds, the other drinks mammal blood. They only drink
around 8 teaspoons per night.
Insectivore: All bats in Colorado are insectivores.
One bat can eat 1,200 mosquitoe-sized insects each hour! One colony
of bats can eat 500,000 insects each night.
Frugivore: Fruit-eating bats have an excellent sense of
smell and strong jaws. Some seeds are dependent on bats and will
not germinate unless they pass through a bat’s stomach.
Nectavore: Nectar-drinking bats have long hairs on their
tongue, just like a cat! Some bats have a lock-and-key relationship
with flowers. Their noses are perfectly adapted to fit into just
one type of flower. They get a tasty treat of nectar, and help pollinate
the plant at the same time.
Bat Trivia
*The smallest bat is called a Bumblebee bat and can be found in Thailand.
It weighs less than one penny!
*The largest bat has a wingspan of over 6 feet!
*The Pallid bat, found in Western North America is immune to the stings
of scorpions and centipedes.
*African heart nosed bats can hear the footsteps of a beetle walking
on sand from a distance of over 6 feet.
*Mother bats are able to find their own young in huge colonies of millions
of other babies.
*A single little brown bat can eat 1,200 mosquitoe-sized insects in
just one hour.
*Tropical bats are essential to the future of the rainforests.
They pollinate flowers and dispurse seeds for countless trees and shrubs.
90% of new forest growth is due to bats.
*Less than one-half of one percent of bats contract rabies. Bats
will only bite in self-defense and pose little threat to people who do
not handle them.
*More than half of the American bat species are in severe decline or
already listed as endangered.
Echolocation
Though soundless to our ears, bats are actually filling our night skies
with noise. Bats fly with their mouths open and emit a constant stream
of cries. They interpret the echos which bounce back from objects
in their path. Because these echoes are faint (maybe only 1/2000th
of the emitted call) bats are basically shouting as loud as they can.
A jackhammer operates at a loudness of about 90 decibels, while the cries
of a bat were measured at 100 decibels four inches from its mouth!
These sounds are so intense, that if humans could hear them, it would
be comparable to the roar of a jet engine. Yet bats can pick up faint
echoes amid all the noise, like hearing someone whispering over the roar
of a crowd at a Bronco game. How do they avoid being deafened by
their own calls? Bats have sound-dampening structures in their ears
which make their own calls tolerable. Though we sometimes hear the
low frequency calls of bats flying overhead, we are deaf to the high pitches
used for echolocation. Bats use ultarsonic sounds not to avoid disturbing
humans, but because higher frequencies can be beamed like a searchlight,
producing sharper echo “images.”
Interesting BAT LINKS
& WEBSITES
www.batcon.org
Bat Conservation International, the original bat organization, located
in Austin, Texas--workshops, Bats Magazine, projects, lots of info, bat
houses, etc.
www.lubee.org
The Lubee Foundation.
www.batconservation.org
Organization for Bat Conservation located in Haslett, MI--good pictures
of their outreach bats, kids page, links,
bat houses, Adopt-a-Bat
www.batbox.org
The Buzbee Bat House Temperature Plot
Based in Denver, CO-huge list of links, temperature plots for their
own bat houses
Activity Guides:
Cooper, Ann C. & Denver Museum of Natural History, Bats:
Swift Shadows in the Twilight, 1994.
Jenning, Jane F., Bats: A Creativity Book for Young Conservationists,
1997.
Prior, Jennifer, Overend Bats: Thematic Unit, 1999.
Tuttle, Merlin D, and Henlsey, Donna L., The Bat House Builder’s
Handbook, 1997.
Tuttle, Merlin D., Discover Bats; Multimedia Education Kit,
1998.
Tuttle, Merlin D., Educator’s Activity Book About Bats, 1998.
Wildlife Ed. Ltd., Zoobooks: Bats, 1994.
General References:
Altringham, John D., Bats: Biology and Behavior, 1996.
Barbor, Roger, W., Bats of America, 1997.
Co. Division of Wildlife, The Bats of Colorado: Shadows in
the Night
Fenton, M. Brock, Bats, 1992.
Fenton, M. B. Racey, P., and Rayner, J.M.V., Recent Advances
in the Study of Bats, 1987.
Graham, Gary, Bats of the World, 1994.
Halton, Cheryl, Those Amazing Bats, 1991.
Hill, J.E. & Smith, J.D., Bats: A Natural History,
1992.
Nowak, Ronald M., Walker’s Bats of the World
Perry, Phyllis, J., Bats: The Amazing Upside-Downers
Pringle, Laurence, Batman, Exploring the World of Bats,
1971.
Tuttle, Merlin D., America’s Neighborhood Bats, 1988.
Wilson, Don E., Bats in Question: The Smithsonian Answer Book
Wimsatt, W. A., Biology of Bats vols. 1, 2, and 3, 1970.
Children’s Books:
Cannon, Janelle, Stellaluna, 1993.
Greenaway, Frank, Amazing Bats, 1991.
Lollar, Amanda, The Bat in my Pocket, 1995.
Lovett, Sara, Extremely Weird Bats, 1991.
Markle, Sandra, Outside and Inside Bats, 1997.
Sway, Marlene, Bats: Mammals That Fly, 1999.
Zoehfeld, Kathleen Weidner, Cactus Café, 1997.
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Colorado Springs, CO 80906
Phone(719)633-9925 Fax (719)633-2254
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