This happens to be National Bat Week – Oct. 25-31, so I suppose an article on the creepy little devils is in order. Everybody I know is either afraid of or is repulsed by bats. Count Dracula was a bat, you know, and who wants to deal with the likes of him?
Bats however are among the most interesting creatures on this planet. Our Virginia Wildlife Division notes that few people realize that through the study of bats scientists have gained valuable knowledge on sonar, coagulation in blood, vaccine development and artificial insemination. The fruit bats of the tropics play an important role in pollination and seed dispersal of many fruits and nuts we eat on a daily basis. The insect-eating bats of temperate zones are major predators of night-flying insects and help keep insect populations in check.
Most of us remember from high school biology that bats are mammals, like us. They bear their babies live, they feed their young bat-milk and they grow hair. But bats can fly and we can’t. They are pretty good at flying, too. A bat can hover in place, fly backwards, stoop, dive and roll as needed. All of these maneuvers may be necessary when pursuing a fleeing insect. Worldwide, there are over 1,000 different species of bats and in Virginia there are 17 known species.
Perhaps the most interesting characteristic of bats is echolocation – sonar, sort of.
The Wildlife Division notes that by emitting a high frequency pulse that travels out and bounces off an object and then returns to the bat, they are able to determine distance, size and direction of the object. Most of the sounds are emitted through their mouths, but bats can emit sounds through their noses. Their ears are sensitive enough to detect slight differences in the time required for an acoustic pulse to return to each ear. This difference tells the bat the direction of the object. Similarly, the time required for an echolocation pulse to return tells the bat how far away the object is. Bats vary the frequency of echolocation pulses they emit depending on their activity. Amazing!
They make something called a bat house and we had one hanging on our fence for the little mammals to call home, but the only residents we ever had in the bat house were wasps. No bats.
Even with the approach of Halloween, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about bats. They hardly ever suck all the blood from a human’s veins.