At this time of year we tend to contemplate scary animals. Well, I guess I understand. After all, Halloween plays a huge part in our culture. But what do you know about Halloween? Very basically, it’s  based in ancient times when people believed we were switching over from a season of life to a season of death. As the seasons changes from warmth and prosperous times, to a time when everything is dying and food becomes scares, people naturally worried about surviving another winter. So it makes sense that in the past this was a scary time of year. It was only later in more modern times that we associated scary animals such as bats and snakes with Halloween.

By the way, the name Halloween comes from the fact that Nov 1st is All Saints Day, and so therefore Oct 31st was the hallowed eve before all saints day, “the hallowed eve” or Halloween. People have always been afraid of things we don’t know much about. Case in point, anything that we don’t see or don’t understand, we often make up stories about it. This is common in most of our nocturnal critters such as bats or animals that we don’t understand like snakes.

As a naturalist and biologist, I find bats endlessly fascinating. As a general group of animals they are very successful. There are only about 5,400 species of mammal in the world. About 1,000 are a type of bat. This means that nearly a quarter of all the mammals on the earth is a type of bat. I find that amazing.

Most of the bats in the northern half of the United States are insect eaters. Bats eat as much as their own body weight in insects each night. In fact, bats eat millions insects each year and they do it in near complete darkness. They locate flying insects with an ultra-sonic sound emitted at 10-20 clicks per second, then listen for a returning echo to locate the flying insect. This echo location is amazing.

Most bat species produce only one pup per year. Yes a baby bat is called a pup. Remember they are a type of mammal. Many species of bat give birth in caves along with thousands if not tens of thousands of other mothers at the same time. They leave their babies behind when they go out foraging for food and remarkably able to find their very own baby by the pups unique sound and smell.

Even though they are small, bats live a very long time. Many bat species can live upwards of 30 years. That is unique since most other mammals of equal size only live 3 or 4 years.

Unfortunately about half of all the bat species in the United States are on a severe decline in population or are already listed on the endangered species list. Much of this is from habitat destruction, disturbance at hibernating sites and more recently from a fungal disease called White Nose Syndrome (WNS). An estimated 5.7 million bats have already died from WNS since it was first discovered just 10 or so years ago. This past spring Georgia State University stumbled across a promising treatment for bats infected with WNS. 

While studying ways to slow down the ripening of fruits such as bananas for extended shelf life, they discovered a fungus inhibitor that not only worked on the fruit but also on the bats. They took infected bats and exposed them to the fungus inhibitor and  by the end of summer the bats were free of the fungus. While not a cure, it is promising start to a very serious problem. Keeping my fingers crossed this works.

So when you think of Halloween and the scary things that goes along with it, don’t worry. Some of our coolest creatures are some of our most interesting. Until next time…

Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the US to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on www.facebook.com or twitter.com or you can contact him via his web page at www.naturesmart.com