Sometimes you don’t even have to walk into the rainforest at this incredible research field station on BCI in Panama to see wildlife. Bats hang out (literally) on the outside walls of my room every day. They are always gone when I come back from dinner because it’s dark out by then and they are nocturnal. Bats are mammals like us. They have much longer finger bones than we do, and they have a thin membrane of skin between the bones so they can fly.
Take a look at the size of the bat’s eyes in this video. Many nocturnal animals have very large eyes so they can see well in the dark. This bat’s eyes are small. Bats use echolocation to determine where they are going and to catch their food. They send out sound waves that bounce off objects and then return to the bat. From this, bats can determine the size and shape of objects that they are approaching.
Very few species of bats are harmful to humans (for example, vampire bats may bite us). Most bats, like the ones in the video are actually helpful to us because every night they eat hundreds of insects, like mosquitoes that are pests to us.
There are many different species of bats on this research island and scientists come from all over the world to study these bats. I guess you realize by now that these scientists (called chiropterologists) sleep during the day and do their field work at night. I’m glad that my roommate here is an entomologist because she works with her ants during the daytime so she and I have a similar schedule.
Click here for a lot more detailed scientific information on BCI bats: http://www.montclair.edu/csam/
- Fran Zakutansky
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