You mentioned the eye sight but what are some other myths let's see well of course the the
the um bats get in your hair everybody thinks that bats are gonna get in their hair uh and
uh one thing that's really cool about that echolocation is that it's really really sensitive
bats can actually echolocate one strand of human hair so it's really uh unlikely that
bats are gonna get into your hair uh although I guess you know it's probably has happened
they're flying along and you probably are more likely to get in their way than they
are to get uh in your hair they're gonna suck your blood we talked about the vampires a
little bit that bats are dirty uh and diseased uh bats are actually really really clean they're
constantly grooming themselves kind of like cats and they groom each other and they groom
their babies so they're actually really clean and uh bats can be a rabies factor so it's
really important to never handle a bat but the incidents of rabies in bats is actually
really low it's about one half of one percent of all bats have rabies unlike uh other animals
that are have similar incidents of rabies so here in the US those are things like skunks
foxes raccoons possums similar you're probably not likely to go out in your back yard and
pick up a raccoon that's behaving oddly but if you saw a bat in your house you might pick
it up and of course we're a lot bigger than bats uh they see us as a threat if you handle
a bat it's likely to bite you because that's one of it's defense mechanisms so it's really
important not to handle bats uh like I said the the incidents of rabies is very low but
you don't ever want to handle a bat just in case bats come out at night they feed at night
uh some bats come out a little bit before it gets fully dark twilight and there are
a couple bat species that'll actually start hunting uh in the late afternoon so it might
still be light out and you can see for example Eastern Red Bats are ones that come out and
they have a beautiful red color so if you see a bat flying around in the late afternoon
and it's reddish in color that's probably a red bat uh other than that uh you know bats
in the summer time uh often have colonies in human structures we have built a lot of
buildings in places that used to have trees and natural habitat for bats and bats have
actually adapted to that pretty well some species so for example little brown bats and
big brown bats are two species of bats here in the eastern US that commonly use human
structures in the summer time so you may see bats underneath your deck or in uh in the
slats in your shutters on your windows underneath your roof line uh and in the summer time those
are often uh either bats that are day roosting they go out and hunt at night and they may
come back and sort of hang out under your deck uh or in barns a and buildings in particular
we get maternity colonies so in the summer time bats and their pups baby bats are called
pups uh actually the females get together in a group and they what's called a maternity
colony so the mother bats uh and the baby bats will all be together in one location
that helps keep those baby bats warm when the mommas are out hunting uh and they come
back and stay with the babies in in the daytime sleep in the maternity colonies in the daytime
so you may be seeing bats in the late afternoon and evening uh in the summertime and you may
see some bats around your house those are those are bats that are adapted to uh you
know humans being in what used to be their natural habitat and if you see them in your
yard is there any danger no I think it's really I think it's kind of exciting I think acyually
a lot of people enjoy seeing bats flying they're really agile flyers they're they're really
fun to watch 'cause they are they turn on a dime they're just really cool to watch they're
how they fly so I think a lot of people actually really enjoy seeing bats and uh if you like
I said before if you see a bat on the ground don't ever pick it up uh don't handle it because
it it probably will bite you in self defense uh if you have a bat in your house uh the
first thing that I always tell people to do is if you can try to close the door to the
room it's in and open a window bats will uh find their way out if they can uh a lot of
times bats that are in your house in the summer time they may be juveniles they're just learning
how to fly they may not be that great at it so it might take them a little bit of time
do bats hibernate in the winter here in uh North America we have we basically have three
different types of bats we have bats that hibernate we have bats that migrate and then
we have uh uh fruit bats uh that live sort of in the desert south west area of the US
and and down into South America so uh here in the north east uh we have the migrating
and the hibernating bats so once it gets really cold there aren't any insects for the bats
to eat so they have two choices uh and some species of bats migrate like birds they'll
fly south for the winter find a place there is uh there are insects active and that they
can feed uh the other types of bats uh and here in the north east we have six species
of bats that hibernate uh they use hibernation as a survival strategy through Winter so they
spend the Fall getting fattened up on insects they go into a cave or mine where they're
gonna hibernate and they go into a state of very reduced meta metabolic rate uh their
heartbeat slows way down uh their breathing slows way way down all of their body systems
slow way down and that allows them to conserve that fat and survive through the Winter some
bats go into hibernation in as early as October uh and some bats will stay hibernating in
to months as late as April so different species are hibernating at different times but in
general all six of those species here in the north east will be hibernating mostly you
know between November and March is when most of the bats will be hibernating we do have
three species that migrate and those guys all head south for the Winter where they can
find food This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts School of Law