Brown Bats & Other Bat Facts
•The common little brown bat of North America is the world's most long-lived mammal for its size, with lifespans sometimes exceeding 32 years.
••A single little brown bat can catch 1,200 mosquitoes-sized insects in just one hour.
•Bats are exceptionally vulnerable to extinction, in part because they are the slowest reproducing mammals on earth for their size, most producing only one young annually.
•In the wild, important agricultural plants, from bananas, breadfruit and mangoes to cashews, dates, and figs rely on bats for pollination and seed dispersal.
•An anticoagulant from vampire bat saliva may soon be used to treat human heart patients. Contrary to popular misconception, bats are not blind, do not become entangled in human hair, and seldom transmit disease to other animals or humans.
•Echolocation allows a bat to communicate, navigate and effectively make their way in their environment. Bats send out sound waves using their mouth or nose. When the sound hits an object an echo comes back the bat can identify an object by the sound of the echo. They can even tell the size, shape and texture of even the tiniest insect from its echo. Most bats use echolocation to navigate in the dark and find food.
•Red bats that live in tree foliage throughout most of North America
can withstand body temperatures as low as 23 degrees F. during winter
hibernation.