Bats

Bats are one of the most interesting and important creatures in the world. Unfortunately, mines, caves, and old growth forests that provide necessary roosting places for bats have been vanishing, sealed up, cut down. Bat houses, constructed by people, serve multiple purposes: they help bats maintain their populations by providing nesting and brood-rearing sanctuaries; they establish bats that control mosquitoes and insect pests' destruction to crops; they permit bats to provide you with an enjoyable, educational experience. The species most likely to make use of bat houses on the Niagara Frontier are the big brown bat and the little brown bat.

The following plan for a small economy bat house is from The Bat House Builder's Handbook, by Merlin D. Tuttle and Donna L. Hensley, presented here with the permission of Bat Conservation International. (PO Box 162603, Austin, Texas 78716.) We recommend the book ($7.95 -- for BCI members: $5.95), and your contacting Bat Conservation International for more information about bats, membership in BCI, and for information on how you can participate in the North American Bat House Research Project. And for people who join the North American Bat House Research Project for $15 (or $10 renewal) they receive a free copy of The Bat House Builder's Handbook, along with other bat house information.

Portions of Bat Conservation International's "Bat Facts and Amazing Trivia" are reproduced here with permission. For additional facts and trivia, go to http://www.batcon.org.

	A single little brown bat can catch 600 mosquitoes in just one hour.
	A colony of 150 big brown bats can protect local farmers from up to 18 million or more rootworms each summer.
	The 20 million Mexican free-tails from Bracken Cave, Texas eat 250 tons of insects nightly.
	Worldwide, bats are the most important natural enemies of night-flying insects.
	Tropical bats are key elements in rain forest ecosystems which rely on them to pollinate flowers and disperse seeds for countless trees and shrubs.
	Tequila is produced from agave plans whose seed production drops to 1/3,000th of normal without bat pollinators.
	Bat droppings in caves support whole ecosystems of unique organisms, including bacteria useful in detoxifying wastes, improving detergents, and producing gasohol and antibiotics.
	Contrary to popular misconception, bats are not blind, do not become entangled in human hair, and seldom transmit disease to other animals or humans.
	All mammals can contract rabies; however, even the less than a half of one percent of bats that do, normally bite only in self-defense and pose little threat to people who do not handle them.
	Bats are exceptionally vulnerable to extinction, in part because they are the slowest reproducing mammals on earth for their size, most only producing only one young annually.
	More than 50% of American bat species are in severe decline or already listed as endangered. Losses are occurring at alarming rates worldwide.
	Loss of bats increases demand for chemical pesticides, can jeopardize whole ecosystems of other animal and plant species, and can harm human economies.
	The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.
	Giant flying foxes that live in Indonesia have wingspans of nearly six feet.
	The common little brown bat of North America is the world's longest lived mammals for its size, with lifespans sometimes exceeding 32 years.
	Fishing bats have echolocation so sophisticated that they can detect a minnow's fin as fine as a human hair, protruding only two millimeters above a ponds' surface.
	African heart-nosed bats can hear the footsteps of a beetle walking on sand from a distance of more than six feet.
	Red bats that live in tree foliage throughout most of North America can withstand body temperatures as low as 23 degrees F. during winter hibernation.