Bats, unfortunately, get a bad rap.
In reality though, bats are some of the most fascinating and misunderstood
critters throughout the world. Bat week is an international, annual
celebration, held October 24-31, that aims to raise awareness about the need
for bat conservation and the vital role they play in our natural world.
Many old horror movies and tall
tales portray bats as blood-thirsty creatures, all of whom carry rabies, that
will intentionally fly into and get stuck in your hair. Let’s start there and
bust some bat myths!
Indeed, while it’s true that a limited few
species of bat, 3 out of over 1400 species, eat blood from other animals, bats
around the world have hugely varied diets, including insects, frogs, fish,
nectar, pollen, fruit, birds and even other bats. Researchers believe that the variety
of bat species is associated with their ability to adapt to available food
sources. Most bats in Texas are insectivorous. As such, bats can act as natural
pest control. Researchers have estimated that bats save farmers billions of
dollars in pesticide due to their appetite for bugs. So, more bats = fewer
bothersome insects and more affordable produce!
Speaking of some of the ways bats
benefit humans, bats provide economic services to people by providing
opportunities for tourism. The Congress Avenue bridge in Austin is thought to
bring millions of dollars in tourism to Austin each year.
For the gardeners, bat guano is a
very effective fertilizer because it is so rich in nitrogen. It’s such a rich
energy source that it is the basis of cave ecosystems that operate largely
independent of the sun. If you want to use it at home, the rule of thumb is “one
teaspoon per tomato plant”.
Next, it should be known that not
all bats carry rabies. In fact, rabies is no more prevalent in bats than in
other common urban animals, including foxes, raccoons and skunks. Many people
mistake bats for rodents but they’re actually a unique group of mammals known
as Chiroptera. They are mammals, just like us. Bats give birth to live young,
feed their pups with milk, are warm-blooded, have furred bodies, and their
wings are comprised of the same bones that form our arms and hands.
Interestingly, bats are the only
flying mammal. Other mammals like flying squirrels can glide, which is little
more than steerable falling. Bats, though, are capable of powered flight,
meaning they can generate lift and speed by flapping their wings. With minute
movements of their fingertips, bats can pull off impressive maneuvers,
including flips, loops and high-speed turns while they chase down their prey.
Some myths have some grounding in
reality. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department bat biologist, Dr. Nate Fuller,
recalls a story he heard from what he describes as “an old-timey bat guy”.
“It turns out that bats flying into
hair is one of the weirdest myths in bat biology,” Fuller says. “Bats really
aren’t interested in you. Sure, they may check you out and wonder what you’re
doing in their home, but they don’t want anything from you.”
Fuller says that the story about
bats in your hair comes from times long past when ladies would wear their hair
up high and wrap them in fine nets. Meanwhile, hygiene wasn’t the best back
then and smelly humans would attract bugs. Bugs would attract bats, and bats,
confused by the acoustic image of hair in a net, would errantly crash into
these towers of hair while chasing down a meal.
Bats vision isn’t as bad as you may
think either. A bat’s vision is about as good as the average nocturnal animal,
such as a raccoon or fox. However, their most effective sensory system is echolocation.
Using high frequency calls and listening to the way these calls echo off
objects, bats can sense their environment in extraordinary detail. Some species
of bat can detect millimeter-sized changes in the environment, such as ripples
on water surfaces. Researchers have also shown that the neurological pathways
that provides echolocation information also translates the signals in color.
So, while the colors aren’t the same that we may perceive, bats can effectively
“see” color with echolocation.
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