Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a 7th grade student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted this wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I found an interesting bit of information. Apparently the University of Ontario led study on the way bats echolocate. The Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario collected 3D scans of the internal anatomy of 26 different bats that represented 11 different evolutionary lineages. The pictures allowed the researchers to identify a bone that connects the larynx to the bones that surround and support the eardrum of the bats. Some kinds of bats use their larynx to generate echolocation signals. Other types of bats use tongue clicks to echolocate. This special little observation makes it possible to distinguish bats that produce echolocation signals with their larynx from bats that do not echolocate and those that use tongue clicks. Scientists who study the timing and the origin of flight and echolocation in bat evolution will be able to use this discovery when they study fossils of bats. Isn’t that cool! I think it is. You can read an article about the study here. Please enjoy this video of a bat echolocating in slow motion!
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a 7th grade student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted this wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I read an article about a place in Shorewood, IL. They have a colony of big brown bats that they are taking care of. Every summer the bats come back and every summer the bats startle people when they wake up and start flying around. So the awesome people at the Hammel Woods nature preserve have decided to do something about it. They say that it’s the humans who disturb the bats’ daytime slumber with noise and smoke from picnic barbecues. To solve the problem, the preserve officials have built a cozy “condo” for the bats that live there. This condo is awesome. It is about 12 feet above the ground and looks like a giant birdhouse. It has several rows of little crevices for the bats to hang out in during the day. The condo is so big that it can hold up to 250 big brown bats! They hope that the bats will decide the new condo is a better home than their old shelter. It should keep them nice and toasty warm and comfy. If you want to read the article, you can see it here .
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a 7th grade student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted this wild colony for years. Hi Everyone! I thought it would be nice to have a bonus blog this weekend. Yesterday was Bat Fest and it was a lot of fun. It was nice to see some of the people who read my blog. It was especially nice to meet TMC. I just want to say hi to him and I loved his bat costume! Bat Fest was a great opportunity to learn about bats. Everyone learned about how awesome bats are and why we need them. I really loved seeing a video of a bat catching a moth. The video showed how a bat does a somersault in the air so it can wrap around the moth. We also got to meet Buzz for his public debut. His is a really cute big brown bat who weighs 20 grams. He did a really good job for his first public performance. Tinybat also made an appearance for the second talk and got to eat a lot of yummy mealworms. It was fun to go outside and look for bats with the bat detector. We were very lucky and found a few flying around the parking lot. They were happily catching bugs. I took some pictures of Bat Fest. I hope you like them. Thank you to everyone who came out to meet the bats and learn about them. I hope you all had fun. (We want to thank the staff and volunteers of Hidden Oaks Nature Center, the volunteers from other organizations, Keith and Connor from […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a 7th grade student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted this wild colony for years. Hi Everyone! A lot is happening in the bat world and some of it is pretty funny. First, the serious stuff. There was a Bat Blitz last weekend in Annandale, VA. They went out to try to catch some bats. They only caught one before they had to stop because of the weather. The project lead was a bat biologist who has a blog that you can read here. He is an awesome photographer and I’m sure you’ll love his stuff! More news from last weekend is that little Freda flew for the very first time! She flew around for a little while and then had to go back inside because the weather was not cooperating again. Now for the funny stuff. I found this story on the internet Thursday. Thank you Yahoo News! Apparently a bat in Tennessee wants to be a news anchor. Too bad the humans on the set didn’t want to give up their jobs. I think you’ll like this. I laughed pretty hard. Last, but not least, don’t forget about Bat Fest Annandale tonight! I hope the bats and I will see some of you there. I’ll blog all about it.
Hi everyone! I hope you had a good week and are enjoying the new school year. While you are busy studying, please don’t forget about all the little bats that need our help and attention. Maybe you could write your first school paper on bats! While you’re at it, please don’t forget about Bat Fest Annandale next week. It’s going to be a lot of fun, so if you live near Annandale, please try to make it. For more information and to register for the 10th Annual Bat Fest Annandale, click here.