 Hello everybody! Good afternoon! My name is Katie Smith. I'm a wildlife biologist with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and I'm here to introduce a video I put together about one of my favorite animals. Bats! Stick around after the video ends and I'll try to answer some questions you may have. Until then, hope you enjoy! Even in cities, there is wildlife all around us. We just need to know where to look and what to look for. A lot of wildlife is in danger because we have built our cities over their homes or habitats. But there is still wildlife here and open spaces for us to enjoy and hold on to. Parks belong to us all and it is our responsibility to protect parks and make them welcome for all of the life that depends on them. Not just for ourselves but for the people that came before us and the people that will be here after. We can all do our part to help wildlife survive now and into the future. The future is dependent upon the actions that we take today. I grew up finding comfort in animals and joy in the great outdoors. Today, I work with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the National Park Service. I get to study a lot of our local wildlife across San Francisco and Marin County. I feel very lucky to have a job that I love. One of my favorite projects is our Marin Bat Monitoring Project. We work with one TAM agency partners and the U.S. Geological Survey to learn about bats across the county so that we can better protect and conserve them. As it turns out, bats are one of my favorite animals too. I hope by the end of this talk you'll have a better appreciation and understanding of these incredible animals. First of all, what makes a bat a bat? Sometimes people think of bats as flying mice but they're actually not closely related to rodents at all. They aren't closely related to birds either. Bats are the only true flying mammals. Mammals are animals that have fur, produce milk for their babies, and give birth to live young instead of laying eggs. Humans are mammals too. There are other mammals, like flying squirrels, that can leap through the air at impressive distances but they technically do not propel themselves in flight like bats do. Unlike birds, bats use their wings to pull themselves through the air, sort of like how we pull ourselves through the water when we go for a swim. The bone structure of a bat's wing are much more similar to the bones in our human hands than they are to bird wings. Their wings are essentially made up of extra long finger bones. In fact, the scientific name for bats is chiroptera, which is Latin for handwing. Bats are nocturnal, which means they are most active when it's dark outside. They sleep during the daytime. Some can live to be more than 30 years old, which is a very long time for something so small. There are over 1,400 species of bats worldwide and they can be found on every continent except Antarctica. Bustle records show that bats have been on our planet for more than 50 million years. They were here even before the earliest humans. Bats are an incredibly diverse group. They come in different sizes. The smallest bat is about the size of a bumblebee, so we have nicknamed them the Bumblebee bat. The largest bats are a species of fruit bat, and some can have a 5 to 6 foot wing span. Different species of bats have different behaviors and survival strategies. There are bats that eat mosquitoes, fruit, beetles, fish, and even scorpions. However, all of the 13 species of bat that we encounter in the San Francisco Bay area are insectivores, which means that they eat insects. Some of our local bats hunt for moths thousands of feet up in the air and others hunt for tiny insects on the surface of water. Some live here a year round, while some migrate for hundreds of miles each year across the Americas. All of our bats here are on the smaller side with some weighing less than 5 grams, which is the weight of one nickel. Unlike most humans, many bats rely on their ears instead of their eyes to navigate the world around them and to find insects to eat. This process is called echolocation. They produce high frequency sound that bounces off the objects around them and then returns to their ears. Bats have an incredible sense of hearing that is much better than our human ears. They can hear a lot of sound that's too high in frequency for our limited range of hearing. Bats can be very challenging to study and there's so much we have yet to learn about them. Our local bats are small, fast, and nocturnal. They can be difficult for human eyes to see, especially at night, and they can be difficult and sometimes impossible for human ears to hear. So how do we study bats anyway? One way is by catching bats with a large net that we call a misnet. These nets are sort of like a super tall volleyball net, but with a finer mesh and smaller holes. We set them up over flyways, like creeks, where there are less obstacles and where bats are more likely to be flying. At night, the misnets can be difficult to see, so sometimes unsuspecting bats will fly right into the net where we can then untangle them and give them a quick health checkup before sending them back off into the night. We also rely on technology that allows us to record ultrasonic bat calls. We call this process acoustic monitoring. Each species of bat has a unique signature call. Once we've recorded some bat calls throughout the night, we use advanced software to view the calls on a computer and determine which species of bat we have recorded. This technology has allowed us to determine that there are at least 13 species of bat living in Marin County. Another way we study bats is by making emergence observations. Once we locate a known bat roost, which is where bats sleep in the daytime, we wait close by and keep watch beginning at sunset. We then count and record the bats as they fly out in search of food and water. So why do we study bats anyway? Bats are very diverse, interesting, and unique, and bats are very beneficial to humans and the environment as well. Some bats can eat up to their own body weight and insects over the course of one night. They are amazing at pest control and save farmers in the United States billions of dollars each year. In other parts of the world, bats help populate plants and fruit as pollinators and seed spreaders or dispersers. For some plants that have flowers that only open up at night, bats are vital pollinators. Bats pollinate over 500 plant species, including some types of mango, banana, and agave. Bats are currently under threat for many reasons. Unfortunately, humans have destroyed and changed a lot of bat habitat that bats use to eat, sleep, and raise their young. Most bats only give birth to one pup per year, so it can take a threatened population a very long time to recover. Climate change and the use of pesticides may also be harmful to bat populations and their food sources. We are also losing a lot of bats to big wind turbines, as well as a deadly disease called White Nose Syndrome. White Nose Syndrome was first discovered in the U.S. around 2006 and 2007. It causes a fungus to develop on hibernating bats, which causes them to wake up early from their hibernation and use up critical fat reserves that they need to survive in the winter. We have already lost more than 6 million bats in the U.S. due to this deadly disease. We check all of the bats we catch for signs of White Nose Syndrome and, fortunately, we have not yet found it on our local bats. As we learn more about bats, we also learn about better ways to protect them. Fortunately, there are ways that you can help, too. First of all, if you see a bat on the ground, do not touch it. It is likely sick or injured. You can call your local wildlife rescue for advice instead. To keep bats, birds, and other wildlife safe, it's best to keep your cats indoors only. Studies show that cats are very skilled hunters and can cause major damage to local wildlife populations. Some areas have local community science projects where you can help count bats by conducting emergency observations. Contact your local parks for more information about their volunteer programs. You can also buy or build a bat box to encourage bats to live near your home. These take some research, but you can find a lot of great information at batcon.org. And lastly, we can all help bats by learning more about them and sharing what we've learned with others. You don't have to wait until you're an adult to study wildlife. You're doing it right now. Your local library has books and ebooks that can help you learn about all kinds of different animals. You can also start getting experience in making observations now by spending time watching wildlife outdoors. There are plants, insects, birds, and all kinds of other life to observe, identify, and protect in your own backyard.