Bat Conservation

We saw many bats and learned many new things about bats today. The thing that left the biggest impression on J/W was "vampire bats". V. bats drinks animal blood like cow, or chickens and is the only bat that can hop (like how a monkey would on the ground). They still use echolocation like other bats to locate the cow or whatever animal they want to feed on. And, no, they don't turn their victim into vampires. :) V. bats don't like human blood because drinking it will give them a tummy ache and diarrhea. Whew!

Bats eat one of our hated insects, mosquitoes and certain kind of bats pollinate flowers just like bees. When bats eat fruits, it swallows the seed and when it comes out, it help to plant fruit trees like kiwi, peaches, bananas, etc esp. in the rain forest. We also use bats for medicine. When vampire bats drinks blood, it leaves a substance which disables the blood's ability to clot so we use that to help people who have blood clots problems. As you can see, we need bats. Unfortunately, bats are endangered due to the loss of their habitat. So one way to support them is build bat houses so they have a place to live.

One thing that was amazing to see was how big and long the bat's wing can extend. I was told bats have all the fingers (i.e thumb,pinky, etc) like we do. For that reason, they are related to us closer than mice.

Look how cute this bat is? It's got a face of a dog.

J/W listens closely along with other homeschoolers

This is the bat that is in our area.

When W came back, he drew bats. :)