A Few Facts About Bats
by Cynthia Owen Philip

I expect, dear reader, that you'll think I've gone batty. As a matter of fact, I have. In the short time I've been researching bats, I 've come up with such a wealth of intriguing, enticing, entertaining, ennobling, awesome, etc. etc. information about these unique furry animals, I'm having a hard time putting the sentences together. But, here goes.

The "flying hand." Bats are the one mammal that can fly (flying squirrels glide). But they do so not at all like birds. Instead of flapping their wings, they "swim" through the air. Nobody knows exactly what the Adam and Eve forebears of the Chiroptera or "flying hand" looked like, but the earliest fossil on record, c. 60 million years old, is astonishingly similar to the bats we know today. The bones of their arms, hands and legs, minus the foot, form the structure of the wings. Encased in a thin, stretchy membrane, they are attached to the body from the throat past the leg to the tail, should the species have one; some do not. The wing's membrane bellows and its bones bend in flight, allowing them to make u-turns in less than half the distance of their wing span, a feat no bird, with its more rigid wings, can accomplish. Researchers interested in building robotic aircraft are trying to figure out bat aerodynamics, but their investigations are still in their infancy. Actually, the first time I saw a diagram of this wing configuration, Leonardo da Vinci's drawing for a flying machine flashed across my mind. I looked it up. Yes, he dissected bats to arrive at a model for his flying machine; its wings were strapped to the flyer's torso and legs.

Bat feet. When sleeping or hibernating, bats hang upside down, clutching a branch, a scarred rock or timber with their five strong toes of equal length. They always hang upside down. They can even walk using the edge of a fold in their wings and their feet, but their stride is clumsy.

The head of a bat. Each species of bat has developed a head that suits its diet and environment. Pictured side by side they look like a parade of gargoyles or a scene of hell by Hieronymous Bosch. There are spear-nosed bats, tube-nosed bats, bats that have an elaborate overleaf attached to their noses, and bats whose noses make them look like horses or foxes or cuddly rabbits. Their ears are equally varied: long, short, rounded, pointed, flaired or slim, or a combination of these shapes. Inside the ear are equally varied flaps called traguses. Bats have teeth, two sets like human beings—milk ones that fall out in infancy, followed by those that last a lifetime (as long as 20 years). The most common bat in New York State, the Little Brown, weighs less than half an ounce, but has 38 teeth including large incisors, more than much bigger bats. Why do they need all those teeth, when their diet is mainly mosquitoes? The only explanation I can think of is that they are a vestige of ancient days that has evolved little since.

Biosonar. The saying "blind as a bat" has got it wrong. Many species see perfectly well. Others see imperfectly. Rather, bats' ability to zero in on such elusive prey as a mosquito depends on their ears as well as their wings. That audio system is called echolocation. Bats emit supersonic squeaks through their mouths or noses that bounce off a tasty tidbit or objects blocking their flight informing them which to catch and which to avoid. (It's still a mystery to me that the signals do not get crossed when hundreds are flying in a darting, swooping mass.) The notion, mainly espoused by women, that bats target their hair is erroneous. A bat's sonar system will announce it is something to miss—albeit often only by inches.

Nursing bats. Bats have odd, but entirely practical, breeding habits. In many species, including the Little Brown, mating takes place in the fall, but fertilization waits until spring after hibernation, when insects to feed the enormous appetites of lactating mothers abound. Most female bats bear only one or two pups a year. They are born feet first, a unique presentation among mammals. After their nativity, they are constantly nursed by their mothers. They hang on crosswise, mouths clutching a teat, feet tucked into the opposite armpit, while she hunts food. Nursing doesn't last, however: soon she leaves them in the cave, attic or barn where they were born. When about a month old, they take wing on their own.

The magic bat. Bats are such an ancient, prolific, weird and goofy order of mammals, with so many species, that it is not surprising they have long been rendered in folklore in diametrically opposed ways. Having the fur, teats, teeth and the nocturnal habits of many wild animals, yet making the air their primary hunting grounds, they do not fit neatly into ordinary classifications. Thus, from time immemorial human beings have endowed them with magic powers. Often they are portrayed as formidable game players who win through their eccentric agility. In modern days such heroics have been translated into the Batman of comics and film. In subcontinental Indian culture, on the other hand, they are usually endowed with a diabolic character, and, in Europe, parts of bats were used to damn one's enemy. "Wool of bat" was an ingredient of the witches' brew in Shakespeare's Macbeth; in The Tempest, the charms mentioned in Caliban's curse on Prospero contained pieces of bat. That bats have become icons of our Halloween is but another expression of this idea.

Still, bat parts were also thought be health restorers: the left eye, for instance, was expected to remove warts, the head either to promote or prevent sleepiness, and the blood to cure consumption and gout, forestall baldness or, conversely, to act as a depilatory. The Roman Pliny advocated placing a clot of bats' blood under the pillow of a lover to induce heightened sexual desire. American pioneers believed that dried, powdered bat hearts would protect them from enemies' bullets as well as prevent them from bleeding to death, while a silk-wrapped bat heart would bring good luck at cards.

Dying bats. Since last year America's northeastern wildlife community has been in a state of alarm triggered by the sudden death of hundreds of thousands of Little Brown bats which were hibernating in caves and abandoned mines. New York State has been especially hard hit. At first the cause was thought to be what has come to be called White Nose Syndrome, a fungal growth that usually attacks the mucus-lined nasal passages and was thought to be like the West Nile virus, a disease imported from abroad in cargo. Many still cling to this hypothesis. But, as over a year has gone by without any substantiation, some are becoming skeptical. Dr. Ward Stone, long time chief of wildlife pathology for New York State and the discoverer of the causes of the West Nile virus, was a naysayer from the start. Early on he noted that the dead bats were woefully emaciated and reasoned that malnutrition was the prime cause of death—that the fungus was just a symptom of their overall weakness. With barely enough stored energy-producing fat to get them through until spring, they hang as still and huddled together as they can, forsaking the wiggling and grooming they habitually perform even during hibernation. Should a bat fly off from its hibernarium during a January thaw in a desperate search for food, it would use more energy than it could replace and be further weakened, for very few insects are abroad then. Dr. Stone also strongly believes that the fungus has been around as long as the bats, but was able to get ahold of them only once they were enfeebled. Moreover, only their noses and external patches of skin are attacked, not their entire body. He suspects that ultimately the cataclysmic deaths will be shown to have roots in a complex ecological problem related to climate change.

One factor impeding a solution to the mystery of the dying bats is the dearth of longitudinal studies, making it difficult, if not impossible, to compare their current plight with their past health record. Is this an isolated incident or a problem that has periodically recurred in the millennia of the bats' existence? No one knows. One thing seems sure, however: we human beings will be affected by the plunge in the bat population. Each darting mammal eats at least half of its weight in insects every night. Without them, we can expect to be stung more often this summer and for our vegetables to be consumed by more bugs.

Other species. Fortunately, so far the massive bat deaths have been confined to Little Browns and, more rarely, to the endangered Indianas. Other species in Northern Dutchess County such as the Big Brown, the Northeastern Pipistrelle, and the Red, appear to be unaffected. In fact, some attics and barns are so heavily infested that their owners feel compelled to chase them out. One of the best ways to do that, according to Jim Dreisacker, whose business is helping homeowners and others to control wildlife invaders, is to give them a better place to roost, such as bat houses near their current sleeping place.

Other people are actively attempting to lure bats to their backyards, both for the evening and early morning entertainment of watching them swoop for insects and because they are a proven ecologically safe way of keeping the bug population in check. I, who had never before heard of a bat house, have since become an enthusiast. I've discovered that local hardware stores may carry bat houses and that handy persons can go to the internet for a surprising variety of step-by-step plans for building them themselves.

Well, that's what I've learned to date. If you'd like to track me down for what new items about our furry friends I've discovered, you might start looking for me in your local belfry!