Welcome to Gaia! ::

Serenity, how'd your presentation turn out? Good luck finding a job, too.

I love bats. I've mentioned it elsewhere, but there is a bat that lives up in the rafters/insulation between my cieling and the actual roof of hte house. I don't know how it gets in there, but I hear it every once in a while. Man, its voice it high-pitched nad piercing. I might actually be hearing it using echolation, but I thought that was too high-pitched for people to really be able to hear.

The bat actually did get in my room once. I was half-asleep, hearing fluttering noises above me, and I thought it was one of the baby birds also being raised in my rafters learning to fly up there. But it kept going and going. Then I opened my eyes to find the bat whipping around my room! It was actually really cool. My main concern was for the bat to not hurt itself. I got my mom, too, so she could see it, and we opened my window for it to fly out. It's amazing how precise their echolocation is. Once the window opened, it found the exit within seconds and was gone.

Scientists guess that the bats-flying-into-your-hair myth started out of two possibilities. Number one, the bats might be snatching up insects above your head that you have scared up as you walk, and it appears that they're coming at you. Number two, you're standing in one of the bat's common pathways. Just like a person knows his/her way to the bedroom door in the middle of the night without actually looking, a bat memorizes the pathway out of its cave/other nesting site. It doesn't need to use sight or echolocation because it knows the way so well. When a person is suddenly standing in the path, its easy for them to smack into them.

And for all those who hate bats, think of this: A common insect-eating bat can eat up to 1000+ bugs a night. That's 1000 less flies and mosquitos to irritate you during the day. You should thank them. biggrin

I Love Bats!!

Yeah Torina! Me too.

You really working very hard on bats, don't you?
I remember when I'm still a little kid, when the sun starts to set, I'm walking home with my mother's friend and my sister, after having some walk. And when the way home, we see a usual thing that can happen everyday when the sun sets. The crowd of bats. But I see a difference with the bat on that time, at that place, and on other places in here, Indonesia. The difference is, they're GIGANTIC. Even my mother's friend's not as tall as the bat's wings length! Not all of them in that size, though, but still, if they could eat humans, I'm in a great danger that time. I never see any bat in that size again until this time. Maybe that's my first and last time to see those bats. Because I mostly at home before the sun sets. Don't know if it's just my eyes, or it's real, but the three of us watches the bats crowd together, and looking those gigantic bats together.

Very interesting. Fortunately, the bats that size don't eat people, only fruit. I would love to see bats that size flying around sometime. Here in the eastern U.S., our biggest bat is the hoary bat, which has a wingspan of only 17 inches (43 cm).