The bat
The bat has a bad reputaton, as it is - mistakenly - considered a symbol of evil and horror ! It is a great help in the fight against mosquitos and flies, as it is a voracious insectivore.
It is a very useful creature, though it wrongly suffers from being taken for a vampire and a source of trouble. It belongs to the chiroptera family (from the Greek "cheir", meaning hand and "ptéron", meaning wing) which contains over 1,000 separate species. The use of pesticides is causing it to disappear in Western countries and it is now protected as an endangered species. Many different actions are being taken to help it survive in Europe, especially the rearrangement of the entrance of caves and bell towers, and even the installation of hollow brick under bridges, which encourage its development.
The bat is the only mammal which has the capacity to fly long distances. Its wings are formed by a membrane of skin which stretches from its body to its members and its feet. As it has diificulty in moving about on the ground, it clings rough surfaces with the claws on the end of its toes. It generally flies at night and is equipped with an extremely sophisticated ultrasound emission system which guides it. The untrasounds it emits permit it to fly in the right direction and also allow it to detect insects in full flight. Each female gives birth to one baby a year, rarely two. The young bats are raised by the females in maternal colonies. Depending on the species, the babies are breast-fed for a period of between 6 weeks and 3 months. It hibernates in winter because of the cold weather. When the warm weather returns in spring, it comes out of its refuge to hunt and breed. In warm weather, it sleeps upside down for 20 hours and hunts at night for 4 hours.
The European species eat insects only. A brown bat can easily eat up to 600 mosquitos per hour. Which goes to show that they are particularly useful for us ! Other exotic species also feed on fruit and blood, thus explaining their reputation as vampires.
They live in highly populated colonies numbering up to 500 individuals. When they hibernate, their organism slows right down. Their heartbeat slows down to 1 beat every 3 minutes, while their body temperature only descends by a few degrees. It lives off its reserves of fat to survive the hibernating period. If a human accidentally wakes them up suddenly, it may be fatal for them !