When people learn we have bats here at the center, the question I hear often is “Aren’t you afraid of them?”

Hollywood does its best to frighten people when it comes to bats, and everyone knows someone who has a scary story to tell.

Often though those stories passed along are full of lots of incorrect information. I am not even sure why bats are a Halloween “icon” because this time of year is when they are less active than other times of the year and they are preparing to hibernate.

Bats come in all shapes and sizes

There are over 1,000 species of bats all around the world and the United States is home to about 40 species of bats.

In Pennsylvania nine species live in a variety of habitats including suburbs, cities, forests and wetlands. All of Pennsylvania’s bats are insectivores and capture their prey in flight. Some species of bats can eat as many as 1,000 mosquitoes an hour.

Because insects either die off or overwinter and create a shortage of food, the bats need to hibernate or migrate and even then, they might hibernate at the new location.

A furry bear with wings?

Bats feed a lot late in the summer to build a store of fat to get through the winter. However, since they are small and must be able to fly, they are limited to how much fat they can store as a percentage of their body weight compared to a bear or other land animal before hibernating.

Their metabolism slows down so much so that they are able to survive on the stored fat for the 5- to 6-month hibernation period. Places like attics, abandoned buildings, caves and mines are important for their survival.

Normal body temperatures for active bats are a little over 100 and their heartbeats reach approximately 1,000 beats per minute. In hibernation the bats temperatures drop to that of the surrounding temperatures, usually 40 to 50. The heart rate slows to only about 20 beats per minute, as compared to 1,000 beats per minute during flight.

By slowing these processes down, hibernating bats can survive on a small amount of the stored fat during the hibernation period, losing from one-fourth to one-half of their pre-hibernation weight.

Time to wake up

In early March, they rouse from hibernation and move to their summer roosts in April. Pregnant females will gather together and form maternity colonies and search for quiet places such as tree cavities or other out-of-the-way places to have their pups.

Snags and trees that naturally shaggy-barked trees like elm, hickory, silver maple, red oak, green ash, and shagbark hickory also are helpful for the bat population.

Hollows in trees also attract them. Dead trees are useful to so many animals including bats. We have several snags on our property that are homes to a variety of animals. These trees are important places for both roosting and raising pups.

Bat reproduction is low because females give birth to one or two pups in late May or June and don’t begin breeding until their second year.

Pups learn to fly somewhere around mid-July and by August they are hunting on their own. Females continue to protect and nurse their pups until they are able to feed themselves entirely without aid from the mothers.

Put your arms into flying

Bats are the only mammals that fly. To be considered flying animals they have to be to be able to move themselves through the air by using wings.

Although some mammals are able to glide, bats are the only mammals that truly fly.

While they are mammals, they are members of a unique order of animals called Chiroptera, meaning “hand wing.” So, they are literally flying with their hands.

The wings are covered in thin leathery membranes stretched between the bones. The long bones provide support much like the long plastic rods of a kite. When bats rest, they fold their wings in close to their bodies.

Old wives tales

My Nana always said she was as blind as a bat without her glasses. Bats aren’t blind and can see very well but hearing is more important as a nocturnal creature. By using echolocation their well-developed ears hunt and catch prey in total darkness.

What happens is the bats create sound “waves” from their mouths. When the sound bounces back off objects in the form of echoes the bats are able to tell what these objects are.

These sound waves bounce off of everything - bushes, fences, cars, houses, trees, people and insects! By using these echoes, they can navigate around objects and find their prey.

My Nana also believed that bats could get tangled in people’s hair. She was always worried about this when I was running around our yard chasing lightning bugs.

I was stirring up small insects and sending them skyward and the bats were chasing insects above me. They would dart and swoop after their prey and I was never afraid they would become tangled in my hair. Flying into my head at the speeds they were chasing insects was the equivalent of someone driving into a brick wall. I didn’t correct her, but I knew better!

Recently, I watched the two bats flit overhead and I was so excited. I stood in awe and watched them until night completely fell and I couldn’t see them any longer. And I wondered if they were using the box we put up for them.

Helping the bats

The photos for this article were supplied by Pennsylvania Bat Rescue. Steph Stronsick volunteered at Project Wildlife based in San Diego, California.

There she helped initiate rescuing bats as part of their protocol. Soon after, she began volunteering at the San Diego Natural History Museum as a collection data analyst for the San Diego Mammals Atlas, preservation of bat specimens, and field assistant.

After relocating to her home state of Pennsylvania, she worked as an associate field biologist for Bat Conservation and Management.

In 2012, she began establishing Pennsylvania Bat Rescue.

She and her team believe that bat species throughout the world should be valued for their ecological and environmental importance and services.

“Wildlife rehabilitation is a vital service that should be available to everyone. Education and dispelling common misconceptions is essential to the conservation and protection of bat species,” Stronsick said.

For more information on the rescue, visit pabatrescue.org.

Jeannie Carl is a naturalist at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center in Summit Hill. The center rehabilitates injured animals and educates the public on a variety of wildlife found in the area. For information on the Carbon County Environmental Center, visit www.carboneec.org.