Are you bats about Halloween? Let us talk about bats.
Halloween is a batty holiday. Bats have been long associated with tales of vampires and other spooky stuff, but of course, bats are really beneficial animals. In honor of Halloween, let us take a look at all things bat.
Bats are indeed creatures of the night. There are over a thousand species of bats, about a quarter of all mammals. They are one of the most successful of mammals and the only mammal with powered flight. They are classified in the order Chiroptera, which translates as hand wing, an apt description.
There are two suborders of bat: the Megachiroptera (big bats) and the Microchiroptera (little bats).
The big bats, megabats, are only found in the tropics (unless they are in a zoo or other setting) of Asia, Australia and Africa. Called flying foxes, they eat fruit, pollen and nectar.
The more familiar kind of bats, the kind we have here is Missouri and Illinois, are microbats, little bats. Some bats do drink blood but most, including the kinds found locally eat insects.
They are described as the biggest predators of night-flying insects. A large colony can consume billions of mosquitoes in a season. They also eat insects that prey on crops, making them a favorite with farmers. Bats can play a role in seed dispersal and pollination.
In the United States, there are 45 species of bats, several of which are endangered. Missouri has 14 species of bats including nine species found in caves. Most Missouri cave bats are genus Myotis, "mouse-eared" bats. Species of this group found in Missouri are the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), the small-footed bat (Myotis leibii) and the northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis). The endangered gray bat (Myotis grisesecens) and Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) are also mouse-eared bats in Missouri. Although they are endangered, they can appear in large numbers. More rare cave bat species found in Missouri include the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus), the Eastern pippistrelle (Pippistrellus subflavus), Mexican free-tail bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) and extremely rare Ozark big-eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii ingens). This bat is only found in Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas. The largest Missouri cave bat is the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) and the smallest is the Eastern pippistrelle (Pippistrellus subflavus).
One hears a great deal about bats and rabies, but rabies are only found in about half of a percent of Missouri bats.
OK, how about those vampire bats? There are none in Missouri or Illinois. The three species of vampire bats are found in the Latin American tropics and subtropics. The common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), the white-winged vampire bat (Diaemus, or Desmodus, youngi) and the hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata) are the bats that feed on blood. The common vampire bat, the only one that consumes mammal blood, thrives in agricultural areas.
Vampire bats hunt by the sound of their prey's breath, according to a 2006 study by Lutz Wiegrebe, a neurobiologist at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, and co-author Udo Groger.
National Geographic News reported recently that livestock attacks are rising as rainforests are cleared for pasture. A team of scientists led by Christian Voigt from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, was able to determine that the bats were feeding on more cattle by examining the isotopes in the carbon dioxide in the bats' exhaled shortly after feeding, something that varies with the prey attacked.
Wild forest animals are the bats' usual prey and cattle were simply becoming more available. Clearing the forests seems to have lead to increasing numbers of the common vampire bat.
So if you want to avoid being bit by a vampire bat, do not be a cow near a South American rainforest.
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