Every month during the summer, the resource rangers at Timp Cave put up their nets along the American Fork River and catch bats as they swoop down for a drink before setting off to hunt for the night.
<-- Cami examines a bat after extracting it from the net.
I went up tonight for some pizza and to check out the action. It was pretty cool! We caught about 20 right around dusk, then one or two later on. They took various measurements, then marked their head with a green marker to make sure we didn't measure the same bat twice. When releasing them, they'd record their chatter to compare the "dialect" to bats from this or other areas. Maybe you've heard of the same thing happening with whales and other mammals.
I learned a few interesting things: there are at least 8 species around here. The largest is the hoary - we caught one just before I left. He was mad! Hissing like bacon frying in a pan. They put on their extra thick gloves to handle him.
Becky takes bat measurements -->
I also learned that bats are more closely related to monkeys and humans than to mice, as I had thought. That's nice. Mice are stinky and annoying and bats are cute and useful. I wish we had more of them to eat more mosquitoes.
Only the resource rangers with pre-rabies shots get to handle the bats, but I at least got to mark their heads with the marker.
<-- the big hoary bat shows off his wing span.
Every month during the summer, the resource rangers at Timp Cave put up their nets along the American Fork River and catch bats as they swoop down for a drink before setting off to hunt for the night.
<-- Cami examines a bat after extracting it from the net.
I went up tonight for some pizza and to check out the action. It was pretty cool! We caught about 20 right around dusk, then one or two later on. They took various measurements, then marked their head with a green marker to make sure we didn't measure the same bat twice. When releasing them, they'd record their chatter to compare the "dialect" to bats from this or other areas. Maybe you've heard of the same thing happening with whales and other mammals.
I learned a few interesting things: there are at least 8 species around here. The largest is the hoary - we caught one just before I left. He was mad! Hissing like bacon frying in a pan. They put on their extra thick gloves to handle him.
Becky takes bat measurements -->
I also learned that bats are more closely related to monkeys and humans than to mice, as I had thought. That's nice. Mice are stinky and annoying and bats are cute and useful. I wish we had more of them to eat more mosquitoes.
Only the resource rangers with pre-rabies shots get to handle the bats, but I at least got to mark their heads with the marker.
<-- the big hoary bat shows off his wing span.
Great picture. For what purpose do they capture and record information about the bats? Where do they store the information? I am glad YOU are the one doing it. 🙂
I dunno exactly, Melanee. Part of it’s to check their health and make sure nothing’s happening to them without our knowledge, and to see if bats from other areas move around much (thus the recording of their sounds as they fly off).
Back east, there’s a white mold or fungus growing on bats, and apparently it makes them use up their winter fat sooner while hibernating and fly out looking for food while everything’s still covered in snow, and starving to death. If they can’t stop it, the bat population could be decimated and that spells trouble!
I assume the info is stored locally unless they come up with something worth publishing.
And I was just along for the ride. I do tours/interp at the cave rather than interesting scientific stuff like this. I’d love to be the one untangling those bats from the net (even that scary hissing one!) but I’d have to get an expensive panel of rabies shots first (although someone just told me that bats don’t carry rabies after all).
Bats do indeed carry rabies. The Silver Haired Bats are more liekely to get rabies then the other ones. Not sure why but “The Duke” a mammology teacher told me that once. Bats with rabies are usually the ones found flying during the day.
We measure the bats to help us indentify them and for general knowledge. The information is also stored in a state database for bats.