Wilderness: Bats
A Letter from Anyll about Bats & Bat Houses:
Hello Everybody,
My name is Anyll, I am 13 years old.
I love wildlife, and I think bats are not only awesome, but also have a key environmental role.
1/3 of the profits will go to Bat Conservation International. These bat houses are well suited for the mountains. They are designed by one of the leading bat scientists in the world, Merlin Tuttle.
Features:
✓ Handmade, solid construction, high quality materials bought from local suppliers
✓ Exterior painted black with non-toxic, waterproof paint to keep inside dry and warm
✓ Caulked and sealed for waterproofing
✓ Extra tall to provide the bats a choice of a range of temperatures inside
✓ Landing area and interior surfaces easy for bats to grip
All of these features are important for attracting bats, though of course there is no guarantee that bats will choose to move in.
To increase their chances of doing so, a bat house should be positioned:
✓ As high as possible, ideally 20 feet heigh or more (but less can also work) with 20 feet of clear space in front for bat flight approach.
✓ Ideally facing east to receive the warmth of the morning sun.
✓ Not in a tree (predator danger and flight approach interference).
✓ Away from any bright night lights.
To see if any bats have moved in, you can shine a bright flashlight up into the house for up to 10 seconds a day. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me personally at christelmarkevich@gmail.com
Best bat luck,
Anyll Markevich
The Beneficial Effects of Bats
What’s up?
→ Bats just have a bad rep. But as you will see they are very important.
→ Bats eat huge quantities of insects, pollinate many of the world’s most valuable plants, carry seeds essential to reforestation, and save farmers millions of dollars in avoided pesticide use.
→ Have you ever eaten a banana? Yes? Bananas are not pollinated by bees, but by bats.
→ Many very valuable plants are pollinated by bats and depend on bats to survive. For some of these plants no other animal can effectively pollinate them.
→ Many tropical plants rely heavily on bats for successful reproduction.
→ One little brown bat can catch a thousand mosquitos in a single hour, and nursing mothers can eat more than 100% of their weight in a night.
→ Now imagine a colony of a million bats all eating that many pests. That gives you a billion insects just one hour. Oh and did I mention that some insects can lay up to a thousand eggs each. Anyway that saves farmers lots of expensive, harmful pesticides.
→ Bats are highly intelligent, social creatures.
→ Bats are highly beneficial, and have some amazing behaviors that are worth looking into.
→ Bats use echolocation that that is the basis of appliances for visually impaired people, or visually impaired people can learn how to use echolocation.
Great, but aren't they scary, and don’t they carry disease?
→ Many bats are actually cute and gentle. They only bite in self-defense if handled. If you simply leave them alone they are very unlikely to make you sick.
→ Think bats are scary? Check out this photo of an Egyptian fruit bat.
→ Have you ever bought bat guano for your garden? You may have not noticed but it is quite commonly used as fertilizer. To get the guano many people in third world countries spend most of their waking hours collecting the guano in bat caves. These people are unvaccinated and have close contact with bats most of the day. Even in these conditions, such people remain on average just as healthy as anyone else.
→ If you have a bat in your house, don’t panic. See more later.
→ Do not try to destroy bat caves.
Why in the world are you telling me this?
Bats are in danger. Because of unnecessary fear they are often deliberately killed, and their habitat is also disappearing. Since so many plants and other animals depend on bats for their survival, losing bats is a very serious matter.
© Merlin Tuttle
Tell me more about this.
Bats are often simply not noticed. Therefore many bat roosts are destroyed without anybody noticing.
In attics they are often poisoned. In Latin America many beneficial bats are mistaken for “vampiros” and thousands, even millions, are killed when their caves and other roosts are burned. There is a bit of a bat problem in Latin America, and it has to do with the vampire bat. The vampire bat does drink blood, mostly from cattle. Even vampires are highly social, have high cognitive abilities, and are amazing creatures. They have overpopulated due to the introduction of livestock, but they live in small, well-hidden colonies. Attempts to control them often end up killing large numbers of beneficial bats instead. There is a way to control them but it is not yet widely used.
In mango growing countries such as India and China, mango eating bats are despised incorrectly because people think they eat mangos before they can be harvested. This is not true, monkeys do that part, bats only eat fruit that is too ripe to be shipped for commercial use.
What can I do about this?
There is a lot you can do.
✓ You can read a great book called: “The secret lives of bats” by Merlin Tuttle.
✓ You can go to Merlin Tuttle’s website and become a Bat Fan. I am a Bat Fan and I get an update every few months, plus a bat flash every month or so. Bat flashes are easy calls to action, usually involving sending an email to an editor.
✓ You can get a bat house. But be careful, not all bat houses are created equal. You can buy a good bat house here or learn how to build a good one by getting “The Bat House Builders Handbook” also by Merlin Tuttle.
✓ Post your bat opinions on Facebook.
✓ Spread your opinion, like I did.
✓ Tell family and friends about it.
Bat troubleshooting!
→ If you have a bat in your house, don’t panic, don’t touch it. Bring it outside the way you would bring out an insect. Put a water glass over it. Slip a piece of paper under the glass and free it outside.
→ If you have bats in your attic that are causing a nuisance, wait till late summer or fall, when you can be sure there are no flightless young bats present. Then hang a piece of plastic over the place where you’ve seen them emerging in the evening, allowing it to overlap the wall beneath the entry point for about a foot. They can crawl out beneath the plastic but won’t be able to return.
Credits:
Anyll (writer)
Read more about Anyll in this article posted on Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation website
