Oooooo, Bats!

I mentioned Shane is interested in bats, right?  A few weeks ago it was squid.  He checked out every book in the entire Pierce County Library system on squid.  He knew all the different species, how fast they could swim, where they lived, etc, etc, etc.  Now its bats.

This is what I hear: Aren't wrinkle faced bats cute? I hope they don't get eaten by wooly-faced bats, also known as the false vampire bat.  Did you know a bat can fly 60mph? That's faster than an orca whale.  And three times faster than a squid! Did you know they can use their echolocation to sense something as small as a hair? I wonder how vampire bats in zoos eat.  Do they have special livestock for them? Did you know that a bat can give birth to a baby 1/4 of her body weight? And did you  know the vampire bat can drink half its body weight in blood?  If a nursing mother bat is taking care of her baby, it uses so much energy the mother bat can't fly and get her own food so other bats bring her food.  Isn't that neat?  I wonder how they do that?

It gets a little tiring, but I'm thrilled Shane enjoys learning about animals.  He has an amazing memory and can spout out facts about different animals all day long.  Yesterday he amazed me when he compared three different species in three different phyla and was able to compare their predator avoidance skills (in this case, large numbers of animals scattering to confuse the predator).

Today when Shane asked if he could set up a bat watching party, I said yes.  They roost in our eaves and eat mosquitos every night.  We even had one roosting behind our famous map of Cuba (when it used to hang in the carport).  After my Little House on the Prairie episode was over, I went out to check on them.  Two bats were actively feeding right off the porch!  I had fun trying to get pictures of them in the dark.  They came VERY close to us!  But I'm not worried about rabies.