It's late at night and you're feeding the horses. All of a sudden something furry lands on your head. If it has wings and is brown, it's probably a little brown bat. The bat lives everywhere except the two polar regions. Ahh! They might be living in your attic. It can fly and becomes an adult in two months. The little brown bat lives in colonies or groups of up to 10,000 bats and they usually give birth in June or July. The bat uses echo-location to communicate. Its body is covered with hair and is made for flight. All bats have lots of predators. People are one of the biggest. People seal roosts and set smoke bombs and use flood lights to drive away and/or kill the little brown bat. Luckily, no animals rely on the little brown bat as a regular source of food. D.D.T. killed a lot of bats but in 1972 people stopped using it. The little brown bat was treated badly by Indians. They did mean rituals with all kinds of bats. Amazingly there are over 1,200 kinds of bats. Young bats ride on their mothers chest. The bat has trouble adjusting to the different seasons. It lives 10-24 years. Something that might surprise you is that bats are mammals. The bat eats mainly insects. It has a chemical that helps break up the insects exoskeleton. The bat is about 2-3 inches long and weighs about half an ounce.

If you want to find out more about this strange creature, check out THE LITTLE BROWN BAT by Carl R. Green and William R. Sanford, which is the book I used.

Squeeeeeeek!

You're in a cave on a dark, stormy night. Suddenly a small creature swoops over your head! Then you hear a noise, it sounds like wings flapping. What could it be ? Could it be a bat? Then you noticed it has a flat nose. You remember what kind of bat has a flat nose. IT'S A BABY LITTLE BROWN BAT!

Female bats roost together to have their babies. They can only have one baby per life. The babies are called pups. They live in barns or caves. Their wingspan is 10 inches long and their bodies are 3 inches tall. They weigh a quarter of an ounce, less then a pencil!

A little brown bat uses echolocation to find it's prey. They cannot see colors but they can see shapes. They can hear100,000 vibrations per insect.

Little brown bats eat fast flying insects. They grind their prey instead of chewing it. Adults have four sharp teeth to hold their prey. They hibernate in caves for 6 months. It's scientific name is Myotis lucifugus which means mouse-eared and light-fleeing. It's life span is 20-30 years long.

You remember you're still in the cave and you're supposed to be home at 8:00. " I'll come back tomorrow!" you say. Then you go home.

I got my information from THE LITTLE BROWN BAT by Carl Green and SHADOWS OF NIGHT by Barbara Bash.