Surprising/amazing things about bats

Tringa

Tringa

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I get a regular briefing links from Nature. One of the recent articles was about some research, understandably given the pandemic, on bats.

It got a bit technical but it was easy enough understand what it is about but a couple of bits of information really surprised me.

One was that about 20% of all mammalian species are bats.

The other was related to the life span of bats.

In general smaller animals do not live as long as larger ones. However, bats, most of which are small, have a much longer life span than other mammals of a similar mass.

When adjusted for body size only 19 out of about 6,400 species of mammal live longer than humans and 18 of the 19, are bats.


Dave


BTW the one other mammal of the 19 is the naked mole rat.

If anyone wants to read the article it is here - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03128-0?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=6c06d8c1f3-briefing-dy-20210128&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-6c06d8c1f3-43857369
 
Tringa said:
I get a regular briefing links from Nature. One of the recent articles was about some research, understandably given the pandemic, on bats.

It got a bit technical but it was easy enough understand what it is about but a couple of bits of information really surprised me.

One was that about 20% of all mammalian species are bats.

The other was related to the life span of bats.

In general smaller animals do not live as long as larger ones. However, bats, most of which are small, have a much longer life span than other mammals of a similar mass.

When adjusted for body size only 19 out of about 6,400 species of mammal live longer than humans and 18 of the 19, are bats.


Dave


BTW the one other mammal of the 19 is the naked mole rat.

If anyone wants to read the article it is here - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03128-0?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=6c06d8c1f3-briefing-dy-20210128&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-6c06d8c1f3-43857369
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That is interesting...

There are Bats that fly over our house, usually about dusk time. We love watching them. We get the impression they live in trees near the house, or maybe they just come from that direction, so not really sure. Not seen them for a while now though, not sure if they hibernate.
 
jonbeeza said:
That is interesting...

There are Bats that fly over our house, usually about dusk time. We love watching them. We get the impression they live in trees near the house, or maybe they just come from that direction, so not really sure. Not seen them for a while now though, not sure if they hibernate.
Click to expand...

Bats hibernate from about November till March, April or even May, depending on the weather, anywhere where there's a suitable hole for them to pack together for warmth. This can be in a tree or in a building. Interestingly, I think they mate before hibernation, but the young are not born till late May/early June. I guess the females have a few weeks feeding up post hibernation before they then go into a maternity roost to give birth, presumably till their young have fledged, or whatever it's called in bats. I often get a maternity roost in my roof - not every year but usually several in succession then a break before they come back. I think mine are common pipistrelles. There are lots of bats around me. They'll fly up and down the side of my house (must be a good spot for insects) and if I sit in a chair at the end of the path I can hear their wings slap as they do stall turns inches above my head. So long as I stay still they'll come really close and there's no danger of them bumping into me. They're more often seen at dusk, for obvious reasons, but they'll fly all night. A few times when insomnia has struck I've watched them coming back home just pre dawn.
What surprised me when I started looking into bats is how little there seems to be out there on the internet, apart from very general information. Or maybe I just haven't looked hard enough.
 
Spent many a happy hour (perhaps after a happy-hour...) watching bats flitting around assorted street lights on holiday and sometimes see them around the street lights on the close here. Not sure what species but the ones here look too big to be pipistrelles.
 
Jannyfox said:
Bats hibernate from about November till March, April or even May, depending on the weather, anywhere where there's a suitable hole for them to pack together for warmth. This can be in a tree or in a building. Interestingly, I think they mate before hibernation, but the young are not born till late May/early June. I guess the females have a few weeks feeding up post hibernation before they then go into a maternity roost to give birth, presumably till their young have fledged, or whatever it's called in bats. I often get a maternity roost in my roof - not every year but usually several in succession then a break before they come back. I think mine are common pipistrelles. There are lots of bats around me. They'll fly up and down the side of my house (must be a good spot for insects) and if I sit in a chair at the end of the path I can hear their wings slap as they do stall turns inches above my head. So long as I stay still they'll come really close and there's no danger of them bumping into me. They're more often seen at dusk, for obvious reasons, but they'll fly all night. A few times when insomnia has struck I've watched them coming back home just pre dawn.
What surprised me when I started looking into bats is how little there seems to be out there on the internet, apart from very general information. Or maybe I just haven't looked hard enough.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that interesting bit of information, that will explain why we have not spotted them recently.
Midway through a TV program, we will press the pause button, just so we can watch the bats for half an hour.
Many a time I have tried to get a photo of them, absolutely impossible. Managed a very grainy video, but even then they just looked like blobs.
 
There was a piece on TV or radio some time ago about what may happen in the future as gene manipulation becomes more possible, that's assuming it's allowed. The life span of bats was mentioned as was that some creatures (maybe including bats I can't remember) aren't affected by most diseases. They also mentioned the possibility of human bones being pretty much indestructible by incorporating "things" from some sea species or other. All very interesting but will it be allowed?

One thing I've been thinking of buying is a bat monitor.
 
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Maybe but it's something I've fancied for a long time. Getting out to use it is going to be a bigger problem for me than the cost though.
 
Bats can carry rabies. I have a neighbour who was bitten on the head by "something furry" one summer's night a few years ago. She asked me what it might have been. When I said it was likely a bat she was rather disturbed. She was even more disturbed when I told her to see her GP pronto.
She was given a course of anti rabies injections as a precaution.
 
Older bat monitors were fiddly. There are more modern ones that connect to a phone and use software to do what detector hardware used to. You get GPS tracking, an attempt at identifying the bats, the ability to play back the bat sounds at a frequency humans can hear, and you can log all your detections. c £200
 
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