Lakeville Elementary students were visited Nov. 21 by three wild beasts that go bump in the night.
Dawn Vezina, an education specialist from the ‘Bat Zone? at the Cranbrook Institute of Science, stopped by the school to chat about nocturnal animals and how they adapt to the nighttime world, their special abilities and senses.
Cranbrook’s ‘Bat Zone? is home to more than 90 bats from around the world and is the headquarters of the Organization for Bat Conservation.
To help illustrate her presentation, Vezina brought three live nocturnal animals ? a bat, owl and flying squirrel.
‘Bats are amazing animals,? she said. ‘And despite what most people believe bats are not blind. They don’t get tangled in your hair. And very few actually have rabies.?
‘And they’re some of the most beneficial animals on the planet,? Vezina noted.
Some bats drink nectar and help pollinate certain flowers that have adapted to only open their blossoms at night.
Most of the bats in the United States eat insects like the ‘pesky mosquito,? Vezina explained. ‘Lucky, for us our bats can eat lots of these mosquitos.?
‘One bat can catch and eat between 600 and 1,200 mosquitos and other insects every hour in our yards,? she said. ‘Which makes them a great way to reduce the amount of insect pests as well as helping to prevent the spread of some diseases like the West Nile Virus.?
Vezina noted that bats ‘are the only mammals in the world that can fly.? Their wings are actually their hands. Skin stretched between its four long skinny fingers form the wing.
‘They have four fingers and a thumb just like we do,? Vezina said.
While flying at night, bats rely on an ability called ‘echo location? as opposed to their eyes.
‘These insect-eating bats have small eyes and they don’t have special nocturnal vision. Instead, they depend on their big ears and their special ability of echo location,? she said.
‘Echo location is kind of like a radar that the animals use to help them find their food and their way around in the dark,? Vezina said. ‘How echo location works is the bats make a very loud sound or a very high frequency sound. This sound is so loud that it goes right over people’s ability to hear. We can’t hear echo location, but the bats can.?
‘They can hear it so well, they can even hear the sound waves as they bounce off little objects like moths and mosquitos and go back to the bat’s ears, giving him a perfect picture in his head of exactly where that insect is located.?
‘A bat’s echo location is so good, they can even detect a human hair in a totally dark room just by listening to the sounds alone. It’s a very special ability and only a few animals in the entire world have it.?
Ninety-five percent of the time a bat uses its ears to find its food as opposed to 4 percent with its eyes and 1 percent with its nose.
For owls, it’s their very large eyes that help them find their way in the dark.
‘Their eyes are so large, they fill the entire eye socket,? Vezina said. ‘You can’t see the whites around this animals eyes as we can in ours. His eyes are so large he cannot move his eyes inside his head like we can . . . An owl’s eyes are so large, he has to turn his head in order to see.?
‘These large eyes allow those pupils to open up really wide to allow as much light as possible.?
Being a nighttime predator, owls ‘use the cover of darkness to help them sneak up on unsuspecting animals,? but they take it ‘a step further.?
‘His feathers are different from the daytime birds? feather,? Vezina explained. ‘His feathers are jagged or frayed at the ends and this allows his feathers to break the surface of the air without making hardly any noise at all.?
‘Owls have almost totally silent flight,? she said. ‘This helps them even further to sneak up on unsuspecting animals.?
Owls also have a very good sense of hearing which allows them to hear the footsteps of tiny prey such as voles who dig tunnels in the snow.
Its a 50/50 split between an owl’s eyes and ears as to how it finds its food in the dark. As for its nose, Vezina explained. ‘Owls do not have a sense of smell. They can’t smell a thing.?
‘Which makes them one the few animals in the world that can actually eat a skunk. A skunk’s defense of a stinky smell is totally useless against the owl.?
For more information about the Bat Zone visit www.batconservation.org or science.cranbrook.edu.