Halloween weekend is a good time to discuss the truth about the little, flying mammals of the night sky.
So what do you know about bats? Did you even know that they’re mammals? They are the only true flying mammal; sorry, but flying squirrels actually glide.
Bats are warm-blooded and have either fur or hair. They birth their young live — no egg-laying for them — and the moms nurse their babies.
Baby bats are referred to as “pups” and are born bald, usually in early summer. Mating occurs in the fall, but here’s a cool fact: The female safely stores the sperm in her body until spring, when fertilization actually takes place.
Bats don’t build nests. Instead, they create roosts: places where they hang upside- down and sleep. Depending on the species, roosts can be found in caves, under bridges, in the crevices of trees, in buildings, and, of course, in attics.
Pregnant females often roost together in what has been dubbed a nursery roost; hundreds can roost at one time. Almost immediately after birth, these mini mammals have the ability to hang upside-down. Within a month’s time, they are flying and hunting on their own, and no longer relying on mom.
Bats are an integral part of our ecological system. The diet of many bat species is strictly insects, and lots of them. A single bat can consume nearly its body weight in insects a night; that’s thousands of insects in an evening’s flight.
These are insects that would otherwise be biting us, spreading diseases or wreaking havoc on food crops. Some bats dine on pollen, fruit, small amphibians and an occasional slurp of blood.
Vampire (blood-drinking) bats live in Latin America. They don’t suck the blood; they prick their sleeping victim (usually animals) and allow the blood to pool, and then they drink it.
When its victim wakes up, the small puncture wounds have scabbed over, and the animal can go about its day.
As for rabies, Bat Conservation International says that over the last 50 years, only 48 people in the United States have contracted rabies because of a bat bite, putting your chance right up there with winning the lottery.
Bats are not blind, as many folks believe. Rather than use their eyes at night, they have a built-in sonar system called echolocation. They send out a high-frequency screech that our ears can’t detect. The sound waves bounce off objects in front of the bat. When the waves return, and the bat is able to create a “picture” of objects, insects and predators from the echoes.
When insect populations dwindle in late fall, bats go into hibernation until spring. Bats that lived to a ripe old age of 30 or more years were not uncommon until now.
While they hibernate during the winter, a fungal infection called white nose syndrome is rapidly overtaking the little brown bat found in New York. As a result, the species could be extinct in as little as 25 years.
In 2009, Scientific American reported the first discovery of the disease here in the United States in Howe Caverns in Upstate New York. Cavers who took photos of hibernating bats there found something white and fuzzy covering their muzzles and wings. Numerous dead bats also were found on the cave’s floor. The New York Department of Conservation has since recorded 1 million bat cases in New York alone.
The disease disorients the bat. It wakes up from its slumber while it’s still winter and burns through its stored fat reserves. That leaves the bat with a low body-fat concentration for the remainder of the cold months, resulting in starvation or death by freezing. The disease is highly infectious, has caused the death of entire colonies of bats within one winter, and is moving throughout the southern states and north into Canada.
The bacterium that causes white nose fungus is believed to be spread by bat droppings that get picked up unknowingly by other bats or on the clothing or boots of spelunkers.
A cure has not been found. But without help, the little brown bat and eight other species of North American bats face extinction, and the result of their demise on the environment will be staggering.
Sadly, it is the little bat that should fear us and not the other way around.
Visit Bat Conservation International’s website () for more information and to learn how to help.
