Happy Halloween everybody! We closed out the month of October on an unusually warm note and I, for one, think that the fall colors were delightful this year. They may not have been quite as vibrant as in some years past, but I got the sense that they lingered longer this year than they have done in past years. All in all I would have to say that October was a delightful month this year.
Halloween always brings images from my childhood to the forefront of my mind. I think of the decorations that might have hung in the classrooms in my elementary school, or the art projects that we worked on to bring home to our parents. Spider webs, pumpkins, witches, owls, full moons, coyotes and bats. Bubbling cauldrons, witches’ potions, eyes of newts and wings of bats. Mummies, werewolves, Frankenstein monsters, vampires and bats. It seems that bats play a pretty big role in Halloween stories, but I wonder how much people actually know about them.
So I dug through my files and I found the most adorable photo of a bat that I had. This particular individual was found by me when I was making preparations for the winter in my garage. This is a little brown bat (Myotislucifugus) and I think that the animals posture and expression definitely qualify it to be placed in the “cute” category; a ranking that may not come naturally to the minds of many people when thinking about bats.
Before I get started on any other aspect of this small mammal’s life, I think it is very interesting to address the species name ”lucifugus.” This is a mash-up of the Latin words ”Lucis,” which means “light” and ”fugere,” which means “to shun.” Combine this with the genus name ”Myotis” and you get something like “the mouse-ear that shuns the light.” It turns out that there is an entire group of bats known as “mouse-eared bats” and they all bear the genus name Myotis. However, “shunning light” is such an obvious characteristic of most bats that it isn’t particularly descriptive of a particular species. I guess even the taxonomists phone it in sometimes.
Bats are often compared to mice, but this is only because of the relatively small size of some species and the fact that people don’t know much about them. Mice, which are rodents, are small and they, too, tend to be nocturnal (another translation for ”licifugus”). However, mice are rodents, which means that they have pronounced incisors and no canine teeth whatsoever. Bats, it seems, are the opposite and they have pronounced canines and very small incisors. In fact, if you were to look at the skull of a bat it would have teeth that closely resemble those of a dog, or a cat, and there is good reason for this.
Like our more familiar pets, bats are carnivorous creatures that hunt and kill other animals for food. Because of their small size, and because of their nocturnal lifestyle, they have come to specialize in eating animals like moths. Insects are animals, so this definitely counts! They have the larger canine teeth for seizing and killing their prey, while they have the blade-shaped, knife-like molars that allow them to slice their prey into manageable chunks for swallowing.
Bats are fairly well known for their penchant for caves. This is easy to understand when you consider that these very small mammals that are so heavily dependent on flying insects as their source of food must find a way to survive the freezing temperatures of winter. Delicate wing membranes would freeze in the bitter cold temperatures of winter, so flying around from one place to another is not really an option. Instead, they need to find a place where they can stay put in peace and quiet and wait out the bad weather. Large caves are great places for this because they can have a constant year-round temperature in the low 50s; cold, but not deadly cold.
Females may form colonies of up to 100 individuals in the springtime when they give birth to their offspring, or they may fan out across the landscape and gather in groups as small as 2 individuals. Baby bats nurse milk, just like any other mammal, which presents quite a challenge for nursing mothers. Imagine strapping a baby to your chest and abdomen and then flying around at night as you hunt for food. That is no small feat! Eventually the youngsters become too large to carry and they soon will wean and learn to hunt for themselves.
Clearly, there is a great deal more to discuss when the topic of bats emerges, but I have run out of room and must stop for now. I will say, however, that this was a particularly good year for me when it came to seeing bats on summer evenings. As a kid I would see bats every night. When I was in my 30s, however, I rarely saw them at all. But this year I saw many and I hope that points to a positive turn in the lives of bats in general. Only time will tell.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 25 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy and the Massachusetts State Parks and he currently teaches high school biology and physics. For more in formation visit his website at www.speakingofnature.com, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.