Viatouch Teacher Articles
Science

Silent Creatures of the Night

by Sally A. Goodness

Tired after a night of hunting, silent creatures of the night hang upside down from a rafter in the attic of an old abandoned house. During the warm months, the decaying farmhouse is host to a colony of thirty to forty Little Brown Bats.

While waiting to eat again after dark, the bats excrete guano on the attic floor. People call bats dirty and messy because the bat droppings smell horrific. However, bats keep themselves meticulously clean. All through the day and between naps, they groom their coats with their long curved claws. They fold their wings around their bodies and lick them like a cat cleans its paws.

By the time the sun begins its slide through the western sky, a rustle of restless impatience fills the attic. Pest patrol time draws near for the hungry hunters. Night sounds fill the hollow where the lopsided house keeps its vigil. From the edge of the pond, the bullfrog's throat blows up like a balloon as he garumphs - garumphs in his resonant bass voice. Crickets chirp. High in a stately oak, a screech owl's song like a whinnying horse cuts through the summer dusk. An hour or two after the sun disappears, the silent creatures of the night swarm out of broken windows.

Back and forth, gliding from one end of a pond to the other, the bats search for prey. Little Brown Bats are but one of over 900 species of bats. They are as long as a stick of gum and as heavy as a penny; yet in one hour, they can devour more than a thousand insects. How do they accomplish this feat? Bats rely on their ears, instead of their eyes. By using echolocation, a method of sending out high beeping sound waves through their noses and mouths, bats are able to locate insects. When a sound wave hits an insect, it bounces back as an echo and guides a bat to its prey.

Bats can switch directions rapidly by changing the shape of their wings to dip and dive. Their webbed wings are like hands, with four fingers and a thumb on each. With a zap, they can scoop up a mosquito with one wing, flip it into their tail membrane, and pop it into their mouths. In addition to mosquitoes, Little Brown Bat's menu includes beetles, flies, moths and crop-damaging insects.

The colony of bats eats throughout the summer. Toward fall, the sun sets earlier every day and the soft, warm evenings grow cooler. Driven by instinct, bats eat as much as possible. Their bodies store the extra food as fat to keep them alive during the long winter months. When cold weather arrives, the bats hibernate in a cave in areas with high humidity and temperatures a few degrees above freezing. There the silent creatures of night will sleep, until spring lures them out again, searching and hunting for food.

The End

References

"Bats", http://www.ag.iastate.edu/centers/whmi/bats.pdf , (8/9/04).

"Bats", http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/er/publications/bats/bats.htm, (8/10/04).

"Bat Encyclopedia: Bat Facts", http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmnh/batfacts.htm, (8/10/04).

Creech, H. (1999), "Animal Diversity Web: Myotis Lucifugus: Information", http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Myotis_lucifugus.html, (8/9/04).

Earle,Ann; Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats; NY: Scholastic, Inc, 1995.

Sally A. Goodness is a retired third and fourth grade teacher. She tutors children in an after school program in an inner city environment. In addition to writing and gardening, she helps at both a dog and a horse rescue operation.