#common bats

My, what big ears you have! Spotted bats have the largest ears of any North American bat, reaching up to 4 cm (1.5 in) long-- nearly a third of their total body length! This helps them to hear their echolocation calls, which are some of the lowest pitched of any bat. Most calls fall within 9–12 kHz, well within the range of human hearing.

Or more commonly known as the Common Pipistrelle. Or even more commonly known as, the most common bat in England. I saw some the other day, out hunting at dusk, with my boyfriend* and decided I should write a bit about them.

*I should point out that the bats were hunting, not me and the boyfriend. I'll admit we are a tad strange, but we don't go as far as stalking unsuspecting prey when the sun goes down. Now we sound like a pair of paedophiles. Briskly moving on.  

Now many people, I have realised, seem to have a thing about bats. Not a good thing, it's a thing that causes them to shudder, gag and use the word "eurgh" before saying bat. These haters would describe bats as "flying rats", but a lot of people probably haven't even seen one in reality, just on a documentary of some sort.

Obviously, bats are nocturnal. They also fly into bedrooms at midnight, grow into large, pale humans, sprout big fangs and drain you of blood. Then they flap off back to the pit of hell they sprung from, to await the next sunset, licking your clotting blood from around their mouths and grinning evilly.

For anyone who developed a phobia of bats during reading that last paragraph, it's not true. Just in-case. 

Now in the UK, where I happen to be from, there are 17 species of breeding bat. All of them protected because the numbers have dropped dramatically over the last century. They are at risk from roosting in buildings, as people can disturb them during the most vital time of the year as they're raising their young. Other habitats are also decreasing, such as hedgerows and woodland. To combat this, more bat boxes are being erected and specific plants grown to attract more tasty insects.

Back to the wonderful bat! The first thing that makes bats special is that they are our only flying mammal! Some irritating people may argue that the flying squirrel also counts, but no. Just no. They run up a branch, leap off the end, spread their fat and glide to another branch. That is not flying. Even though it's still a pretty decent skill to have, I wouldn't mind being able to do that, scaring the living daylights out of people as I glide merrily by on my enhanced arm-wings.

Anyway; secondly, they can screech in a pitch so high that most of the time the human ear cannot detect it, bounce the sound off of flying insects, work out the distance they insect is away from them and catch them. In a split second. Damn. This is actually how we realised there were bats out with us, I could hear this extremely high pitched noise in short bursts, coming from above us. Just call me Bat Ears or something. But don't. Seriously though, that's an amazing thing to be able to do, and is called Echolocation. 

Another misconception people have about bats is their eyesight, in fact they can see almost as well as us. Great, so they have ultra sensitive ears, up to 110kHz, compared to our measly 20 kHz, and would also be able to see us easily in the daytime. So you cant run away. Predators night and day, they will hunt you down. This probably isn't the best time to mention the Vampire Bat, which does exist and does suck blood. It only lives in Central and South America though.

Finishing on a few fascinating statistics: Pipistrelle bats are about 4cm big.

: They can eat up to 3,000 insects a night

: They can live up to 30 years

: And they are more closely related to you, than mice.

Sleep well.