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| So, bats, eh? This isn't like other webpages about bats, though. No heresay here. You'll never find a statement on this page that I can't back up with proof. I've studied Pennsylvania bats firsthand and I have a paper coming out soon about bat rabies. So, trust me, you can take my word for it. I thought we'd start this out by clearing up some misconceptions: 1. BATS DO NOT SUCK BLOOD That is not to say that there isn't a bat that feeds on blood, because we all know about that bat. The vampire bat, found in South America, actually bites and then laps up the blood. It has an anticlotting agent in it's saliva that keeps the blood coming. These bats do not fly at you and attach themselves to your neck. Like most wild animals, they go for the easy meal - mostly cattle. Incidents involving people usually occur when the person is sleeping. Since the vampire bat is the size of a large field mouse, in most cases, the bite wasn't even hard enough to wake the person up. 2. BATS ARE NOT ATTRACTED TO HUMAN HAIR Bats are attracted to fruit, or insects, or whatever their favorite food happens to be. Scientists have yet to discover a species that prefers hair. Of course, if you should happen to have bugs in your hair, I can't really comment. 3. MOST BATS ARE NOT 100 LBS WITH A 4 FT WING SPAN Thanks to Hollywood for spreading this misconception. Most bats, and all bats in the US, are pretty small, weighing only a few grams. Of course, there are exceptions. When Hollywood puts a live bat in their movies, it's usually the Flying Fox, from Australia. Flying Foxes may be two feet from nose to tail with a 3-4 foot wingspan. Drawn here, these bats eat fruit and are so tame that people have been known to keep them as pets. 4. BATS DO NOT CARRY RABIES This is a touchy subject because I do have a paper coming out soon and I don't really want to disclose the details and ruin the suprise. Let's just put it like this. Puppy dogs carry rabies, kitty cats carry rabies, and moo cows carry rabies. There's no special reason why you should be any more cautious about bats. OK, maybe that's not quite true. Remember, bats a nocturnal (sleep during the day), so if you see one awake during the day, something's wrong with it, don't touch it. You won't, however, get rabies from having bats live in your attic. There is one certain way to contract rabies - get bitten by a rabid animal. There's also some evidence that rabies can be contracted by aerosol means, but this has only ever happen a couple of times to people who were in caves that held thousands of rabid bats. I think you're attic's still safe, unless its a lot bigger than I'm thinking. 5. BATS ARE NOT BLIND Actually, they see just as well as we do. But, as we don't see very well in the dark, neither do bats. That's where echolocation comes in. Bats send out calls at frequencies that we can't hear. The call bounces off an object (tree, house, etc.) and comes back to the bat. Judging the distance of the object from the bat depends on the length of time it takes the signal to get back. |
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| This page was last updated on 4 July 2008. It is maintained by Linsey Palazzi. |