 I'm not a Vermontri, you can tell by the way I talk, I grew up in Ohio, I taught high school there for a while, and then I moved out west to a big state called Montana. I've been in Harvard for 27 years, been doing programs like this, butterflies, pollinators, bats for 23 years. And I always start my bat program by asking people what they know about bats. We're going to talk about a lot of things about bats, but I just want to get a feel about what you know. So like what's one thing you know about bats? Yes. They're mammals. They're mammals. They're our only flying mammals, right? Yes. They eat insects. They eat insects. Our bats eat insects. We have bats out west that are nectarine bats. We have fruit bats all over the world, but in New England our bats eat insects. A little brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in one night. They can eat dozens of beetles, which help farmers. They can eat moths. What else do we know about bats? They're nocturnal, so they're active in the evening and night, and they rest and sleep during the day. Anybody know about how they navigate? Sonar. They're emitting frequencies constantly. When you see a bat flying, it's constantly emitting frequencies that are too high for us to hear. And if we could hear them, they would be almost as loud as a fire alarm. But we can't hear them because their pitch is too high. They measure sound frequencies in kilohertz, and our ears can pick up sounds up to about 18 kilohertz. As we get older, like into our 60s and 70s, that number goes down. So if you're in your 60s, more like 18 could be 17 or 16. If you're in your 70s and 80s, it goes down even farther. So that's why we can't hear bats because their pitch is too high. The little brown bat has a frequency of somewhere between 26 and 35 kilohertz. And of course humans are curious, right? We want to know. So we want to know what do those bats sound like? So if somebody invented a thing called a bat detector. The bat detector will... Don't ask me how. I'm not a scientist or an engineer. But the bat detector will slow down the frequencies through some kind of mechanism. And then we can hear frequencies low enough for us to hear. So when there used to be a lot of bats, remember that? I would go to neighborhood parties and I would take my bat detector. And if I saw mostly the little brown bats, that was our most common bat. I would turn on the volume and dial this to somewhere between 26 and 35. And lo and behold, we would land on the sound of the bat echo locating. And it would sound like our little brown bats and our big brown bats make a clicking sound. Some bats will make a bird kind of sound, chirping sound. So we would hear through the bat detector something like this. In real life, it's a lot faster and higher pitch to be camera. So by doing that, bats navigate without bumping into things. They can see as well as us. Bats are not blind. But imagine yourself flying at 40, 45 miles an hour at night with our eyesight. You would bump into things. So bats use echo location calls to help them navigate so they can pick up instantly a wall, trillium, moth flying by. So it's a pretty amazing thing that they can do with that echo location call. Let's look at the bat. In a way, these are a few things in here that bats eat. Things that are either nocturnal or, does everybody know that big word that describes the time of day just before sunrise or just before night? It starts with a C-R. What was that? They're crepuscular, yes. So these are the creatures that are crepuscular or nocturnal in here would be bat food. Let's take a look at the little brown bat. It has a wing span of 80 to 10 inches. Used to be our most common bat, but with a white nose syndrome which devastated millions of these species of bat. It's no longer our largest, our most common bat. Are lightning bugs on their menu? Yes, lightning bugs are beetles and so, yeah, they're on their menu, yes. So the big brown bat is now our most common bat which has a wing span of 12 to 16 inches, so probably a little bit bigger than this frame. How much do you think a little brown bat would weigh? We're talking ounces because they have hollowing in a very light. You want to take a guess on how many ounces a little brown bat would weigh? Don't be afraid to be wrong. Two ounces. Two ounces. When I have kids there, they're always one ounce. Two ounces. Two ounces. Yes. Anybody else want to take a guess? No. Six ounces. Anybody over here want to take a guess? No. The big brown bat weighs one ounce. A little brown bat, one fifth of an ounce. So about two pennies. Our smallest bat, the bubbleweed bat, which you'll see on the slide, it's half the size of this, so probably weighs one penny. How old do you think little brown bats get to be in their lifetime? How many years? Eight. Eight. Anybody else want to take a guess? Five. Five. Anybody over here? These risk takers. Yeah, we have a couple of them. Twelve. Twelve. Okay. You're thinking very logistically. Mammals this size typically would live to be maybe three to eight years old. Not much longer than that. But bats have a special thing in their genes that keeps them living longer. This bat can live up to 35 years. A lot of our other bats live 20 to 25 years. And then the final question, I'll put you on the spot one more time. Well, maybe not the last question. What are the babies called? I've read in books, fictional books, they call them batlings in some of the stories. And I prefer that. That's not what they're called. Pups. Pups. Right. How many pups do you think a mama bat has in one year? More questions. One. One. One. So when our bat populations go down, either because we take away their habitat, the biggest factor in the last 15 years has been the white-nose syndrome, which has infected caves. Started in New Hampshire and has moved west and is still affecting bats. It has killed millions of bats. What the white-nose syndrome, does anybody know what white-nose syndrome does? How that affects bats? So it makes their wings a little brittle, but the big thing is it keeps them from hibernating. So it wakes them up during hibernation. Has anybody ever been to the Dorset Cave? Dorset Vermont? It's our biggest cave for bats hibernating. And bats from all over New England go to that cave. At one point, there were more than 50,000 bats in that cave. Because of white-nose syndrome, it went under a few hundred. So it killed off a lot of bats. And so if it's waking them up, then out of their hibernation, then their metabolism raises, rises. They have to eat more because they're losing their energy more. So they fly out of their caves and it's January and then they freeze. And that was basically the story of the bats in caves having white-nose syndrome. Some would get, some they call fat bats, would eat more for some reason. They were just lucky. They got, maybe they had a couple of moths right before they went into hibernation or something. And they were able to withstand, wake up a few times, go back to sleep and still make a few more turns. And they're cleaning out more caves, trying to get rid of the fungus. But it's going to take a long time for bats to come back to what we used to see 15, 20 years ago. Because they only have one puppy year. Has anybody seen more bats? Some. I mean some is better than what you probably saw five, ten years ago. So they are making a little bit of a comeback, but again, if they only have one puppy year, it's not like the monarch butterfly that lays 500, 800 eggs. So if the monarch population are down and the conditions are right, they can bounce right back. But bats is going to take a long time. And that's if the conditions are right. And as we may know, that's not the case. We're constantly battling the environment and things that disrupt environment, clean environment. So, yes. So what are some things we can do to help bats? We've had a bat house there, so we're looking for it. We can have a bat house and that would provide, that would provide a residence for maternal bats. Most of the maternal colonies would take up residency in the bats when you're at it. And they're having their pups. So, but that's, this is Jim's bat house. And Jim mentioned to me that he has made a few bat houses and he's put them up and he hasn't had any bats yet. And I told him that's because bats are very loyal to their roots. So when they come out of hibernation in April or May, they're going back to the same place they always gone back to. So, yes. So these bat houses are for their summer use when they're not hiding. Right. And then they will tend to go to another place to hibernate. Yeah, I have one here. Jim has four different compartments. And mine has one big compartment. This can hold about 60 little brown bats. And if you decide to put it up at bat house, I always tell people don't hold your breath, but there may be a case where bats habitat has been taking trees that have been cut down and just looking for a new place and they may find ticket residency. Got a wire mesh and so does that one. You want to put it at least 10 feet high so they feel safe from predators. You want to put it facing south or east because it is the mama bats in pups in the house and pups are, you know, they need to love heat. And then you want to paint it the color. Don't ask me how bats know that they have a certain color or praying mantises or whatever. But they, you know, they want to camouflage. So if you paint it brown or black, it has a better chance of them going into it. Could you explain that mesh again? This is a wire mesh. And it goes up into the box. And that's so the bats can grab onto something. Otherwise it's kind of slippery in there. And this is pretty smooth wood. So the wire mesh goes all the way up. Perhaps in your bat house, it may be a little rougher. Inside it's a rough sea. So it's pretty good for them. A question on the positioning of the house. Full plow is not too high. Good question. I don't know. Full plowing. I mean, there's, this one has a gap here for ventilation. So, and probably there's some gap. Yeah, there's a gap up on the top to all three around. Yeah, mine has gaps as well. Yeah, so I'm not an expert on that question. I mean, I was told that south facing because it keeps warm. But who knows? A lot of, I've seen bat houses that are in trees. So they could be in some shape in some sun. But you might want to research more of that if you build a bat house. So, white nose syndrome has killed a lot of bats. If we take away their habitat, that hurts bats. If you want to help bats, I tell people, if you want to help bats, we have to be more wild. And people go, oh, what was that? You like more mosquitoes? Yeah, more bugs, yeah. So if you want to see wild, you have to be wild. My wife and I, we let one third of our yard go. We don't mow. And we just generate bugs. We do get bats. We also get more birds because they eat insects. Generally speaking, if you let things go, you know, this whole phenomenon of neat lawns, manicured lawns, has been around only for a couple hundred years. Well, some of the wealthy in Europe would do that. And they're just now realizing that if you let things grow, they also absorb carbon. There was an article two days ago in the New York Times about corporations. It was in the business section about corporations that you look back at in other places that are totally transforming their landscapes. They're not mowing. They don't have these manicured emerald lawns that go on forever around their properties. They're letting them go wild and doing natural grasses. For one thing, the grasses absorb carbon. Another thing, if they don't mow, they're not running their lawn equipment that takes gasoline. So those are all important things in general for our environment. But as far as bats go, you let things go a little bit. It'll generate more bugs, and that's good for the bats. All right. We're going to... Mows also, they're related to bats in this program because bats are pollinators. Not our bats. Our bats are insect-eaters, but a lot of bats are pollinators and so are mows. They both pollinate net-gluing flowers. So I'm going to do a slide show, and when I do this with kids, nobody knows what these are. And they never will see it again because nobody gives us this. But these are slides, and of course, you know, that the slide goes to the slide on the screen, and that's how we get our image. I was a substitute teacher for 10 years in Hardwick in elementary school. And every time we had an assembly, this was back about 15 years ago, 20 years ago maybe. It was right when the PowerPoint was coming up, so I don't know if it's changed. It might have gotten better. But back then, every time they would do these PowerPoint presentations at the assembly, something would go wrong, and then they'd have to bring in the maintenance person, IT person. It would take sometimes 10, 15 minutes to get fixed, and the teacher would, what do we do with these kids for 15 minutes? So I use the old-fashioned projector because sometimes I do three shows in a day, and I have to go from one library fairly quickly to the last. So I rely on the old-fashioned codec projector. We're going to see the slide show, and then we'll have questions after that. There are no kids here, so we're not going to do the teacher craft. We'll do that with kids, usually. Unless you want to. Unless you want to. The thing is, I have youth-sized shirts, but I have a couple adult shirts, and I have a couple extra large that would be like a medium adult. So we could do the shirts. It's really fun. So if we want to do shirts, we could do shirts. Okay, let's do the slide show first. Do you want me to do the screen? Yes, please. I move this fairly closely to the screen because we do have a lot of light coming in. I think this will work. So these are...perfect. These are slides, pics, photos that were taken by a guy named Merlin Tuttle who used to be the president of Back Conservation International in Austin, Texas. It's an organization that is an educational organization that informs people about bats. And also, there's a lot of research and there's a lot of work in the tropics on helping bats populations. And this is a Mexican long-tongue bat, and bats are pollinators in many areas. And you can see the pollen all over its face. So this bat was going after the flower, after the flower, going after the nectar, the juice, and picking up pollen and pollinating flowers. This is a leaf-nose bat. And this is out in either Arizona or Mexico or Texas. Probably... If your organization is in Austin, it's probably in Texas. This is a saguaro cactus, one of the blooms at night, and it relies on bats and bobs from the pollination. You can see that this is a flying fox. Some of our biggest bats are flying foxes. They can have windstands three, four, five feet. So do they hover like a hummingbird? They hover, yes. They hover like a hummingbird, yeah. Or they grab on... I think some of the bigger bats just kind of probably hold on. This is a flying fox. This is a flying fox. This is a bat. It's called a flying fox. Yeah, pepper bat. Most of our flying foxes are found in the tropics. Highland has the largest silver-ed flying fox, which has a windstand between five and six feet. It also has the smallest bat, the bumblebee bat, which has a windstand about four inches. This is a southern blossom bat. Most of our bats, all of our bats have small eyes and rely on echolocation problems. Some bats have emerged, or evolved to have larger eyes and they can use those eyes to see. Some bats have evolved to have big ears and they can hear predators. We'll see a couple of those bats. This is a bat negotiating a fig. If this fig drops straight down, it doesn't have a chance to grow because the limbs of the tree will keep out the rain and the sun shine, but the bat will take the fig, eat part of it, drop it, and then we have a chance to grow. This is a silver-ed flying fox eating a mango. Taking a mango. Here are some flying foxes. A couple of them are interested in the photographer which is right in the middle. They hang out during the day. They don't always sleep. They just rest sometimes, just like cats. Smallest bats in the world probably bat. They weigh about one penny. Some of our big bats can weigh a few times. We have bats that skin the water and we'll have some dye in the water. This fisher bat will do that. We have amphibians. Notice a lot of our echolocators have gaps in their teeth and that allows the sounds to go off more efficiently. This is this bat. You can see the gaps in his front teeth. Is that a Michael Tyson bat? Michael Tyson bat. Big brown bat which is our most common bat now in the Northeast. This is the bat that is using echolocation calls and as they get closer and closer to an object like a moth they'll increase the velocity of their bat calls. They're really homing in on it. Some will scoop insects up with their wings or they'll just attack it with their mouths. This is a northern long-eared bat which is a bat that we have in Vermont. It's always been a bat that's not very common but with the White Ghost in the room it's lost 99% of its population and that is a kiddie den of the scheme. Calla bat is found out west. You go to New Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona you'll find Calla bat using those big ears. Also the Townsend's Big Ear bat. This is a Townsend's Big Ear bat. Wings of the bat are like our hands. You see the finger ears and the thumb. The border of bats is called chiroctorum. Whenever you hear chiroctorum these wings and chiroctorum these hands. So bats are the border of handling. Here are a colony of calla bats. I'm not allowed to have a live bat because they're wild creatures and I had a live bat. For one thing, I'm not doctrinal but also people would not be happy in captivity. I did program in Hershey, Pennsylvania one time. I had a little zoo next to the library near the library so somebody from the zoo brought a bat over and then took it back into its colony. So we're looking up at a ceiling? Yes, we're looking at a, yeah, it looks like. It looks like the camera is probably up in a little thumb kind of niche. Townsend's Big Ear bat looking at us. The calla bat looking at it field. So we have two slides left there of the vampire bats. Vampire bats are different than other bats and that they use their legs more. If the bat fell off its perch, it would have a hard time walking and they're not used to using their legs to walk. Vampire bats live off the backs of animals. They don't suck blood like the vampire movies. They have sharp teeth. They straighten the skin of the horse or a chicken and they will let the blood up like a cat. They have something that's live with that numbness of skin so the animal doesn't feel it and they have something that keeps the blood flowing a little bit. They take about one or two teaspoons an evening so they're not hurting the animals as far as loss of blood. They can run up to eight miles an hour. The other thing that I give the vampire bat is the disco bat because it was pictured earlier. This is a vampire bat. Some people say they give you cartwheels. There are the wings. What's that? There are the wings. The wings are, yeah. So it says wings folded. So all up in here it's folded as wings. So these would open up when it wants to fly. You don't need a wing. You don't need the wings when you're young. That's the thing. Vampire bats probably do more than other bats because they don't need those wings when they're on the bat. They're not going after insects. They're not flying after their prey. The last slide is the vampire bat. Taking blood from, I imagine this is a chagrin. Could be something like an ostrich. It's pretty big. The vampire bat is about the same size as our little compacts. They're talking to the foot? Yes, the claw. Scrape some of the claw. And yeah. Okay, that's the end of our slideshow. So the name of the vampire, did that come from folklore? I mean, was Dracula first to be named the vampire bat on the day of the year round? Or did it suggest like... That's a good question. That's another good question that I haven't really... I think I tried looking that up at one point and I never got to the answer. What came first? The movie or the bat? I'm assuming... How far do you think the movie, vampire character, goes back? Well, movies are only in the 20th century. But stories. But there's books. Because I know that... What's the scientific name? Does it have a vampire name? I don't know the scientific name for the vampire bat. That's a good question. Yeah, because... Yeah, if the literature came out, let's say, 1700s, people were classifying before that. I mean, there were a lot of... Especially the British did a lot of classifications. When they came over to the United States, they classified all the butterflies. So they were classifying quite a long time ago. Um... Yeah, so... I wonder if... the Latin word that they took for vampire has anything to do with blood? Another good question I can look up. Yes. Anybody know? Okay, oh good. Great. With a... There's modem... T... leaf nose. That's leaf nose bat. Yeah, I mean that... I think that Latin name probably refers to leaf nose. So that's not an answering question. Well, we both have homework now. Yes. Yes. Thanks. This is probably why I didn't get the answer. It's not readily available. I was wondering about predators, whether owls or... there were nighttime predators. Owls are the main predators of bats. Snakes... Um... How do snakes do it? Snakes are pretty tricky. Snakes are pretty tricky. You know, they can... they can climb up to where the bat is roosted. If a bat falls off its perch, then it's easy prey for a lot of things. And are the babies... to stay in the... where they're sleeping? So the babies, they nurse until about six weeks, I think it is. Six to eight weeks. And they can fly on their own. I tell people, if you're a batsman or attic and you want to close off the exit hole, you want to wait until about August to make sure that the babies have taken off with them. But the babies, do they fly? Are they still connected to the mother? When they're... When they're not flying on their own, they're connected to the mother. They're holding on to the mother. But otherwise, they're staying in the bat house or wherever they... Yeah, they're staying in the attic or wherever. But most of the time, they're with the mother. They hang on with their legs and this is a... sounds painful, but they hold on, they bite, they take, and hold on that. They're mom's flies. So, it's not mom's. How do bats know whether what they're approaching is a moth or a tree? They probably know because they probably know... maybe as a baby, this is just as a baby, maybe they've learned from the mama's from echo location calls once they've developed it. Maybe they've learned that when something is fluttering the mama eats it. Is there a different echo location sound? There are different sounds for communication. So, when there's a whole lot of bats fluttering around, for instance, when they go into hibernation, they all get together and flutter around. So, they all bump into each other communicating. But then there's another communication echo location call for locating either trees, limbs, walls and fluttering, in a sense. Yeah, those are good questions. Kids don't ask those kind of questions. So, I get to learn more when I have my bill all day. So, bats don't make nests of any sort? No, they don't make nests. So, you talked about being in Hattuck's, where's the other place they are in there? They could be in trees, they could be on, if you have loose clappards on the side of your house, under umbrellas. I think mine is in a louvered bed epic. Any place where they can have tight spaces they can get into. I've also found them on an upper barn door that was closed. There was a little space. I've seen bats hanging out. I've spent some time in Nicaragua and I've seen bats just hanging on a wall, pretty high up. Not enclosed anywhere, but just hanged up. And I actually, yeah, maybe bit my back because I was taking a shake off of the greenhouse that was dark. And I felt a little knit, and I thought it was a once. Oh. When I gathered it up in my arms and it, but then when I put it on the ground to fold it up, a bat fell. Oh, so you might have gotten bit. And I don't, I don't think he was sick. I think he was a healthy bat. I just smooshed him when I Well, he didn't have rabies, we know that. Right, well, I called the rabies hot running and they said, oh, you've got to have the shots. They insisted and so I did go through which wasn't painful. It was just a week long series of taking the shots. But they were pretty adamant. They did not want me to be in the first case. Of all the bats that are brought in, I'm thinking they have rabies. They may be fluttering, they may be stumbling around on the ground and they look sick, but they just don't use their legs. About eight or nine percent actually have carotid disease. So raccoons carry more than pass. But you're going to watch it off because now that you're carrying it, how do they get rabies? It's another good question that I don't know. I don't know how they pick up rabies. Because I think, don't you have to be beaten and get the saliva of an infected animal into you? I think so. It seems that way. Yes. So they must be bitten by predators that carry rabies. And survive. And survive. So it is true that you do not want to get bitten by a bat. You don't want to get bitten by a bat. If you can help it, I'll get bitten by a bat. If you're handling, if you have a bat in your house maybe ten years ago we had a bat in our bed and it was flying around the world. It was circling, it was neck-tongue. It must have come down. We had a little hole about that big in the ceiling and it must have come down through the attic. So I basically opened the window. I wasn't afraid of the bat because I didn't think I was going to do anything. I opened the window. Bat circling above me. Told my wife we'd lost our flashlight and then shut the light off and the bat followed the light. That's how we took it. I also have butterfly nets, so I'll do that too. When did you get started today? I had an experience in college, but I think my friend's cat had already made it a little bit. I don't know how we would have caught it during the day because it would have been quite, right? No, they can see. Yeah. So it was maimed. So in that case, maybe a rehabilitation, I mean, in Vermont you probably call it VINs because they rehabilitate. There may be people in this area that rehabilitate birds or animals. Yes. When faster pursuing flying insects, do they echolocate on a single flying? They're constantly echolocating. So they can echolocate on a mosquito? Usually they go where there's a lot of mosquitoes. So they can open up them? Yeah. Like around water where there's a lot of hatches, including mosquitoes. Did you want to say anything else about your bat house? No, it's made of cedar and I followed the regulations of the International Bat Association. Was it the same one, Bat Conservation International? Yes. It's a fairly basic car for bird. This white nose disease, how far has it gone up? It's gone up to western states by now. In other countries? Not that I know of. They did have it in Europe a long time ago and that's eventually over many years we covered. It takes a long time. It affects bats that like damper caves. Some bats lose more water when they're hibernating and so bats like the little brown bat and northern long-eared bat, they lose more water so they tend to gravitate towards damper caves and that's where the fungus grows. Whereas the big brown bat wasn't affected very much at all because it hibernates in drier, or in attics during the winter. Started in New Hampshire about 15 years ago. They wake up during the hibernation when they're hibernating and it wakes them up so their metabolism increases because in the hibernation it goes way down so they can get through the winter and they use up more fuel energy and then they have to eat so they fly out for food in January. You'll see a lot of people recording a lot of bats that were dead right outside wherever they were hibernating. So does the respiratory system come out from the sleeping and not let sleep at night? I'm not sure. Maybe itches? It makes their wings brittle. It can still fly but so it probably does something where it's it would be like if you were sleeping and all of a sudden you had something with your arm some kind of ache or stiffness in your arm and then you roll over and you probably wake up. It aches and pains. Yeah. This is what you have in your little plastic pin there. This is my friend Taco. He's a Mexican he's a Mexican what is he long-haired long-haired tarantula and I bring him because mainly because tarantulas are kind of like bats they don't get the respect they deserve they're sort of like people don't take kindly to them so yeah I usually have kids touch him and just get more familiar with him and one of the aims of the bat program is to try to get people more familiar with bats so they're not so afraid of bats and same with Taco yeah, what is it? It's two days one it's an issue with the power of the power of bat yeah Yeah yeah yeah I heard that there is some laws that generally have them in the bat if they're bigger they can do it I haven't heard that, but it could be true yeah, could be true I'm not even do that Yeah, I've never heard that before. This is the first time I've heard that. Okay, so if you're not doing the t-shirt craft, then the program is over. Thanks for being a great audience.