Have you ever held a bat in your hand? For some people this sounds horrifying. For others, it sounds fascinating. I haven’t held a bat in my hand, but I have watched others do it at a Master Gardener presentation years ago. The speaker brought live bats with her to show how harmless they were.
With over 950 species, bats are one of the largest groups of mammals in the world, following rodents. Most bats occur in warm regions. There are 45 species in the U.S. with 23 in Nevada, mostly in southern or western Nevada. There is the long-eared bat, the pallid bat, the silver-haired bat, as well as Townsend’s big-eared bat to name a few. Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight. They may roost in caves, tree or rock crevices, barns, bridges, and bat boxes. Some bats can live 15 years or longer under natural conditions.
Bats are beneficial in Nevada, eating large quantities of various insects, including mosquitoes, grasshoppers, and locusts. The pallid bat even eats scorpions. Some eat pollen and nectar from night flowering plants. In fact, without bats agave plants (the source of tequila) would not be pollinated. Bat decline was occurring because of the over-harvesting of agave, leaving little for bats to eat. Conservation groups partnered with producers to leave enough agave plants to keep bats healthy. Bat guano is a good fertilizer. Bats carry less disease than ground dwelling mammals and rarely transmit disease. Nevada does not have vampire bats.
Most bats in Nevada migrate to warmer areas or hibernate to avoid winter. Nevada bats are born in the summer. One year we found a young bat roosting inside our patio umbrella. We left the umbrella alone for awhile to give the young pup a chance to fly away without disturbing it.
According to Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW), we can help bat populations thrive by leaving older and dead trees for roost sites and by avoiding pesticides that not only kill their food source but also impact sensitive bat pups. Bats like to fly over ponds and stock tanks to drink, but these water sources should be at least 7-feet long with wildlife escape routes. Avoid disturbing maternity or hibernating sites such as caves, abandoned buildings, or mines. Hibernating bats awakened early may starve from lack of food.
For more information on bats go to the NDOW website at www.ndow.org. Find out how to build bat boxes and where to hang them at the Bat Conservation International at www.batcon.org.
— JoAnne Skelly is an Associate Professor and Extension Educator, Emerita, University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. She can be reached at skellyj@unr.edu.
