PITY THE POOR BAT

The older I get the more concern I have for the welfare of little animals. Actually, even big animals, too. But not all of them. I have sympathy and concern for the zebra who is being eaten by a lion. I would feel sympathy for the lion if it were being eaten by an elephant, but since that doesn’t happen, I have yet to be concerned about lions. But I am surprised that as much as I hate the thought of bats, and as much as I am revolted by pictures of bats, under the right circumstances I will feel sorry for them.




Take for instance the latest threat to the little brown bat. It appears to me from pictures that it is an exceptionally small bat. Other than its ferocious visage I’d have to say in general it is a cute little thing, no bigger than a minute. It’s hard to be repelled by a tiny furry something, though the bat might consider that he wouldn’t have such a bad rap if he’d keep his mouth closed a bit more. Don’t you think this picture is somewhat cute? Look how tiny he is -- and maybe scared too.

Anyway, for the last few years biologists have seen what they call a “white-nose syndrome” attacking these little bats. Whatever disease that has produced this syndrome is decimating the bat population. Under ordinary circumstances I’d probably say, “Good!” but how can I say that when I see a picture like this of all the little hanging bats sick with the white-nose syndrome?




The farmers are hysterical about their demise, because bats are voracious eaters of insects that carry diseases and attack crops. Each bat during a midnight foray can eat 100% of its weight in insects each night. And of course biologists themselves don’t want any critters to die out. The biologists have a theory as to what is happening, ie bat waking up during hibernation and burning up too much energy trying to get warm, thus being in too weak a condition to ward off disease. And they have an idea of what they need to do to prevent it, ie warm up the bat bedroom.

The researchers propose using insulated boxes about 18”x 12”x 6” that would hold about 200 bats each. A heater coil like those used in snake cage would raise the temperature inside the box as high as 80 degrees. The heater coil would be powered by car batteries linked to solar cells. During the winter they would put these boxes in caves where the bats normally sleep. If the bat woke up during hibernation he or she would automatically fly into them and warm up quickly, saving their strength to live another day! If I understand this correctly, the white-nose syndrome is only a winter problem.

It is hard for me to visualize 200 bats in a box. It is equally hard for me to want to visualize any bats in a box. But apparently bat boxes are used all over the world, of course not with heaters in them. I found a website that encouraged people to buy one of the bat boxes to give their bats a home. http://www.batconservation.org/content/Bathouseimportance.html


I am sure there are bats where we live but I don’t want to see them and I don’t want to think about them. All the general bat websites that I consulted said bats do not fly into your hair. However, knowing my reaction when a measly June bug flies into my hair, you wouldn’t want to see my reaction if a bat accidentally got in my hair.

So I think it is a good idea for biologists on the east coast to do research there on those tiny little critters to prevent the white nose syndrome from taking over. And overall I do believe in live and let live, even when it is one animal killing another, but I don’t have to like it. But be assured that I am not going to go exploring in my neighborhood at night to see what I can see. I don’t really like bats any better after reading all about this syndrome than I did before. Nevertheless, I'd like to see the sick bats cured.

RATS AND BATS

When I was in elementary school the "pets du jour" were little white rats. Every kid with willing parents had his or her white rat. I suppose there was an ulterior motive in this, because if we had a daddy rat and a momma rat, we definitely would learn about the birds and the bees, saving our parents having to give us a lesson in sex education. However, we all knew if tiny hairless pink rat babies were born, we had to get daddy rat out of the cage in a hurry because he was apt to eat the babies. We didn't know why, but we knew it was true. And we also knew it wasn't fair to extrapolate from this that males of all species would do something similar, especially human daddies.

So with what I am going to tell you next, I don't want any wild extrapolations, although I know some of you will be sorely tempted.

From a recent AP article comes the following:

"A research team led by Syracuse University biologist Scott Pitnick found that in bat species where females are promiscuous, males boasting the largest testicles also had the smallest brains. Conversely, where the females were faithful, the males had smaller testes and larger brains.

"'It turns out that size does matter,' said Pitnick...

"'The study offers evidence that males - at least in some species - make an evolutionary trade-off between intelligence and sexual prowess,' said David Hoskens, a biologist at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter in England and a leading authority on bats' mating behavior.

"'Bats invest an enormous amount in testes, and the investment has to come from somewhere. There are no free lunches,' said Hoskens, who did not participate in the study."

As you can imagine, I about laughed myself off the couch. And passed the newspaper on to my husband.