What's amazing is they can pick out a lump on a plant!!

Where as we have evolved to pick something nice off a menu :yum:

Oh I love that picture! Bats were on my childhood list of creatures that get under your skin and provoke a kind of romantic awe. Along with wolves and foxes. Mum's terrified of bats after one got caught in her hair when they were happily sitting in the inglenook fireplace at a guest house in the Isle of Man. Or did it get caught in aunt Stell's hair and she was with her....maybe.

Used to go out bat-spotting with Dad in Queen's Park at night. Bats and owls and hedgehogs. A night-worker on his night off, and his insomniac little girl :P

FTR that insect on the cactus is a cricket. I don't think anything but ants will eat roaches.

Or they heard of somebody getting a bat caught in their hair... someplace... sometime... :rolleyes:

And there is a reflection...

Sorry, but the last bat that got caught in someone's hair was, besides the first, also probably dead and had to be stapled to the person's head. Bats are WAY too agile and quick to get caught in someone's hair. When I was working for Rockefeller University for Dr. Donald Griffin (he was the guy who thought up some ideas like "Animals think." and "Bats echo-locate prey.") at the Millbrook, NY field station we caught bats using vertical strands of wire. Imagine a whole framework of thick wire strung vertically with about 2 inches in between each wire. Now, the bats echo-locating was accurate enough for them to be able to turn sideways IN-FLIGHT and go in between the wires. We had to set up a second framework wire thing behind that one and with the wires offset so the bats would get a sonar bounce of the first set, turn sideways, and fly right smack into the second set of wires. We had a little collection bin down at the bottom to catch the bats so the volunteers could safely (safe for the bats, not the volunteers) pick them up and put them in burlap sacks.

Bats catch moths on the wing using echolocation.

Some moths have evolved to be sensitive to bat's sonar bursts and to fly in evasive loops and spirals when they hear them.

So bats counter-evolved to send short, irregular bursts of sonar so they can sneak up on the moths.

The struggle continues.

Moths are now dumping strips of aluminum foil around them to mess up the bat's radar. Unfortunately, bats use sonar, but moths can't read, so they got confused.

Definately happened. Have checked with Ma, and it was Stell's hair it caught in. It wasn't flying in open air, it was flying out of an inglenook fireplace, in which was sitting a bunch of people eating a dripping supper.


[eta] come to think of it...the lighting of a fire and all that smoke may well have been what drew it out in the first place.

My grandmother used to have bats in the eaves of her house. (The square thingies on the ends were called batboxes) Every summer we would get a long bamboo fishing pole and stand below the batbox and whip the pole back and forth very quickly, making a high pitched whirring sound. The bats would fly right into it, rendering them unconscious. We picked up the bats and put them in a "croaker" sack then beat them om the porch floor till they were dead. If granny were still alive, I'd ask her why we did that. In retrospect, I now know that they were not only harmless, but beneficial. Maybe they caused mites or some kind of odor....I don't know.

And they WILL jump on your ass.*

*see posts 454 - 456

Aw ferchrisake, all he did was look at you. :rolleyes:

We used to get bats in the house 2-3 times a summer in our old house in Coatesville. The whole city was lousy with them, all old house and old trees...
Anyway they're awesome outside, but I never got comfortable with them flying at me in the living room (they look pterodactyl size in flight) or crashing around my bedroom in the middle of the night. Spent many an evening crawling around on the floor, pregnant, with a blanket over my head opening doors and screaming at them to gtfo.
Good times...

My Aunt in NE PA has hundreds of bats in the attic of her old country house. They have been there for decades. It smells a bit musty and stinky in that house, but it's cool to watch them flying out at night.