As we head into Halloween, a time for candy, costumes, and all things spooky, I wanted to highlight one of our favorite mascots for this joyous holiday… bats! Their very mention might give you the hebe jebes but let me ease your mind a bit. I want you to take a second and think of your image of a bat and what feelings that conjures up; maybe you’re thinking of a blood sucking, all black bat, racing through the sky or maybe if you’re like me you thought of the cute faces of a hondurain white bat or an endangered indiana bat. No matter what your feelings are, I hope you leave with at least an indifference if not a newfound love for these winged creatures.
Our love story with bats begins with their name. “Cheir" greek for hand and "pteron" greek for wing combine to form the perfect name for these “hand winged” creatures of the night. They also dislike the moon, preferring to fly and hunt during the new moon as opposed to the full moon to avoid predation. And if that doesn't convince you, please consider the time someone told me that “bats look like mice with wings” although I’m more inclined to think they look more like puppies (at least the fruit bats). Most of this article will focus on insectivorous bats which are what we tend to envision when we think of bats but couldn’t avoid including at least one fruit bat picture.
If your not one to be persuaded by aesthetics, bats are amazing bioindicators (something my project partner and I are studying this semester) and save farmers billions of dollars a year on pest control by eating almost their weight in insects most nights eating and assortment of bugs including moths, flies, and of course everyone's least favorite insect, mosquitos. Mosquitos are known for not only being a summertime nuisance but also for the variety of diseases they spread via their bites. Insectivorous bats could help to control the spread of such diseases by consuming a multitude of mosquitos every night. They serve as amazing bioindicators because they’re sensitive to noise and light pollution allowing us to gauge the amount of ecological disturbance in an area based on their presence and diversity. These ecological wonders also serve as important pollinators for many plants including bananas, avocados, mangos, and some cactuses including agave.
When I asked a few of my friends in the IE program what they wanted to know about bats the most asked questions were where do they sleep, are they in cities, and my favorite: are they friends.
Normally bats will sleep in dark places that they are able to congregate whether this is a natural structure like a cave, hollow tree, or within branches or in manmade structures like attics, barns, bat houses, and….bridges? (don’t fret; we’ll get to that part soon).
First off we need to discuss bat houses, structures you can put on the side of your house or in your yard in order to attract them to your yard, provide them with housing and hopefully make a few new hand winged pals who may return year after year. They tend to to take a while for bats to take up residence in but after a couple of years and with the right research you to can have a small colony of bats protecting you and your family against mosquitos.
For the second question, they do in fact live in cities. A prime example of this is the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, TX. When bats began roosting in the crevices under the bridge residents responded with fear and headlines like "Bats Sink Teeth Into City" however after education and outreach by Merlin Tuttle, a leading bat conservationist the fear died down and the bats were allow to use the bridge as their own apartment complex for part of the year in exchange for the service of eating bugs. These free tailed bats now fly from Mexico to roost under the bridge from the spring until October or November when fall weather pushes them south. They continue to provide tourism opportunities to Austin as people gather to watch the bats take flight.
Now are bats friends? Maybe not in the ways that we consider friendship like regurgitating part of a blood meal for a buddy who missed a meal but similarities can be drawn. You probably give your friends food or a warm jacket from time to time and although bats can’t really be true gentlemen and hold an umbrella up in a leaky cave, they do tend to engage in grooming behaviors, offer partal blood meals to friends, and lead them to patches of land with plentiful bugs. So maybe bats are a lot more like you and me than we thought. So maybe the next time you eat a banana or have a night with fewer than usual mosquito bites thank a bat. Thank you for giving them a little extra love during the time of year we call spooky season and consider telling the neighborhood kids about the wonders of bats (kids will listen as long as you give them candy).
-JS