The Wolf and Bat

[rowingbum]

Bat, used Nikkor 18-200 & SB-900.
Wolfe Spider, used Pentax 100-300.
BTW...Bats are really nice folks. I am doing a story on them now,
and did a shoot with them. They purr like kittens when happy and
have a syntax vocabulary of 42 sounds they communicate with.
Their fur is like mink and their feet are backwards from ours.
Eat tons of mosquitos.

[lhdvies]

Neat David-When I was kid on the farm(Illinois eons ago), we had tons of bats. We used to throw corn cobs up in the air & they would come out of nowhere to chase the cob to the ground. It was fascinating to see how close their radar took them to the ground before they went back up.

[corralup]

Wait a second that bat is alive? Don't they bite or carry rabies? Educate me some more.
I have a few in my yard in warmer months and I was wondering what kind of bat is that?
I'm glad they eat mosquitos.

[rowingbum]

Common misrepresentation. Less that one half of one percent of bats carry rabies.
These bats were in a group of bats that had been rescued by a wildlife coalition from Houston and handled by experts. Part of my reason for doing this story is to help educate folks, including myself, about bats. Most animals in the wild have the potential to have rabies, O'possum being one of a few exceptions.

[rowingbum]

Sorry, forgot to answer your question. That is a Yellow Bat. Having said all that about rabies, if any layman picks up a bat and tells the wildlife folks they handled it, by law they have to put it down and check it for rabies. For this reason they urge people to not handle them bare handed. Which of course is not far when you examine the data on how few actually have rabies compared with other wildlife.

[jfoureyes]

Great photos and excellent information! Thanks for posting this!

[greenman]

David,

Yeah, unfortunately for bats, they have a bad reputation! It's a lot like snakes and spiders: both have a bad reputation and many people fear them, but they're VERY helpful creatures to us! They keep down vermin and other "pests" and we'd be overrun without them!

Excellent job on trying to educate folks (including yourself!) on these beneficial creatures!

Thanks for sharing, too!
Sam

[Stephen P]

Yes, good info and nice pics especially of the bat.

[sandboa]

Neat post. I've never seen a Yellow Bat (alive).

I really love photographing bats and members of this genus are high on my target list. It would be cool to be able to photograph a roosting Yellow Bat but IIRC, they roost in clumps of spanish moss so they would be tough buggers to find and photograph.

Thanks for sharing this. Bats are really underappreciated critters by photographers.

Chris

[labmansid]

Looks to me like that "wolf" is about to have a bunch of "pups"!
Cool shot of the bat. I have always thought bats were fascinating.
When I was a teenager, we lived out in the country and had one of those automatic greenish night security lights by the house. The bats would circle around the light scooping up bugs that were drawn to it. I would sometimes entertain myself by sitting close by and lob small pebbles in the air to watch the bats chase them. One time a bat caught one of them, and disappeared into the dark. A few seconds later I heard a "Tink" coming from the tin-roofed hay barn, and realized the bat had dropped the pebble over it!