fledermaus (g)
bastão, morcego (P)
bat (e)
chauve souris (F)
pipistrello (i)
palace of marfa, portugal
Some of you might be familiar with Die Fledermaus, translated as the Flitter Mouse, an operetta written in 1874 by Johann Strauss the Younger, the Waltz King best known for the Blue Danube waltz. Maybe, the “Flitter Mouse” is partly to blame for the misconception that bats are rodents but it probably goes farther back then the 19th century. My goodness, the French word for bat translated to English is “bald mouse”. But, bats are not rodents: Bats are mammals. They have hair, a regulated body temperature, and the ability to bear their young alive and nurse them. They are, however, the only mammals that fly. In all, there are more than 900 species of bats of many different sizes. And they are found everywhere in the world-except for a few islands, the Arctic and Antartica.
Bats mostly eat insects: moths, beetles, gnats, and crickets, which are out in large numbers at night. So, bats generally feed at night and sleep during the day. They need somewhere quiet to sleep and raise their young so some of their more favored roosts are barns, attics, caves, abandoned mines, belfries (hence the saying someone has bats in their belfry) and hollow trees. However, the girders of a bridge will also do. The Congress Avenue bridge spans Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin, Texas. It is home to the largest urban bat colony in North America–about 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats. And it’s a maternity colony, all female bats who raise about 750,000 pups (that’s what a bay bat is called) every year. Each night from around mid-March to early November, the bats emerge from under the bridge. During the winter, the bats aren’t exactly hibernating but they do enter a state of reduced activity known as torpor.
Although people often use the saying that “someone is blind as a bat”, it’s a misnomer. Bats can see and they also use something called echolocation to locate their prey. They emit a series of supersonic cries through their mouth or nose and detect flying insects by the echoes reflected back. While a lot of young bats don’t make it to adulthood, once they do, adult bats live relatively long lives; with one bat living to the ripe old age of 30. Once again, unlike rodents, who may only live for one or two years.
One would guess that the bats who live in the Mafra Palace Library, in the 18th century Palace of Mafra in Portugal, have a long life span as they have a pretty good situation. The library contains thousands of old books, which attract bookworms, moths and other insects. During the day, the Mafra Palace Library bats sleep in the bookcases or in the palace garden. At night, they fly through the library, preying on book-eating insects. The only problem with the situation (well, for the librarians, not the bats) is the amount of droppings or guano the bats leave behind. Library staff have to cover things at night and spend a lot of time every morning cleaning the floors. Clearly, the library wouldn’t be Ace Ventura’s favorite spot.
Speaking of well-taken care of bats, in 1991, the University of Florida in Gainesville built a special house to house their bats, who had become homeless after a fire in the university building where they previously lived. After the fire, the bats had occupied nearby bleachers and a stadium and needed a permanent home. Presently, there are two bat houses which house between 450,000 to 500,000 bats. Go, Gators. or should we say Go, Fledermaus.