Bats of the Midnight Sun | Hacker News Reader

Bats of the Midnight Sun

hakaimagazine.com

34 pointsVigier14 comments

This article is full of fluff, like too many long-form articles on the Internet, but contains some interesting questions for those of us who study bats...

- Bats evolved for a night-flying niche to avoid predation by birds like hawks and owls. In such a high latitude there is little true night, so how do they adapt?

- White-Nose Syndrome is so deadly (90% to 99% mortality for Myotis species) because it thrives in the cold, humid temperatures that bats rely on for hibernating overwinter, and its high mortality rate is related to the fact that these bats cluster together shoulder-to-shoulder in great numbers (tens, hundreds, thousands, tens-of-thousands of individuals) allowing the fungus to spread rapidly when introduced by an individual. These populations of Little Brown Bat in Alaska don't roost in traditional cave/mine roosts in high numbers. How does this affect WNS spread, mortality, and these populations' ability to survive?

- Hibernating bats do so to wait out the winter, where there is unfriendly weather and no night-flying insects for food. The Alaskan "winter" is incredibly long and severe, meaning that these Little Brown populations must have an extra reliance on hibernation for survival. How does this affect their susceptibility to WNS?

Also, the photo of ~7 clustered bats roosting in an attic has an incorrect caption; these are Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus fuscus), not Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus).

Is being active at night really a good strategy to avoid predation by owls?

Owls rely on their very good low-light eyesight to find their prey. Bats use echolocation to detect and evade them. If it's dark enough, the bat has the advantage.

It never ceases to shock and amaze me that, since bats are mammals, they literally turn mosquitoes into milk. One bat can eat around a thousand mosquitoes a night!

>>> since bats are mammals, they literally turn mosquitoes into milk.

and now I'll never have breakfast anymore. Thanks

Unless you are pouring bat milk on your Cheerios, I'd reckon you're not going to be affected by that particular fun fact.

The same can't be said for the legally acceptable portion of rat feces that makes its way into pretty much all processed grain products.

The shocker isn’t the mosquitoes->milk equation, but that you’re using bat milk on your cereal.

I love bats. I have a cheap bat-detector. I live by a river; I think my local bats are brown bats (not "little"), but there might be different species.

It's illegal to interfere with bats here, unless you have the right training. I don't have suitable photographic equipment, so all I can do is listen to the critters. I can often glimpse a flying shadow, and I'd say they're about 5cm long. .

A magic experience for me was sitting in a desert spring at dust with bats skimming the water to drink.

Tip: In forests near a source of water you'll often see bats appear in the early evening. But only if you stand still for a few minutes without a flashlight. I think if you have a flashlight or if you're moving around they avoid you. But when you stand still they don't notice you.

If like bats, you might also enjoy this short story: https://poplarfluff.pages.dev/stories/the-day-of-the-bat

Without bats feasting on mosquitoes the life on the North at summer would be unbearable.

Do bats eat mosquitoes? I'd imagine mosquitoes are too small for the energy bats spend flying to catch them to be worth it.

Is a good question.

This particular species feeds on Lepidoptera mainly, but Diptera are the second group most preyed upon (45% of diet, including mosquitoes). Smaller bats eat more mosquitoes, but is not clear how much. Each bat should eat between 600-1000 a night to survive only on mosquitoes. Fat juicy moths are preferred when available.

Near Artic Circle there are lots of mosquitoes and moose flies.

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