Happy Halloween! While we gorge on sweets bats are building up their fat reserves and preparing for months of hibernation. RSPB Scotland’s Allie McGregor shares five facts about one of our favourite spooky species.
Species in Scotland
There are 9 species of bat that can be found in Scotland. We have the brown long-eared, whiskered, noctule, Natterer’s, Daubenton’s, Leisler’s, and three kinds of pipistrelle – common, soprano, and nathusius. If you’re looking out for bats in your garden you’re most likely to encounter pipistrelle, noctule, or Daubenton’s bats (though perhaps not so many at this time of year!).
Pipistrelle. Chris Shields (rspb-images.com).
Blind as a bat
Contrary to myths, bats aren’t blind and they can actually see quite well! However, they do often use their ears over their eyes to hunt. Bats use ‘echolocation’ which means they use the reflection of sound (the echo) to locate the objects around them. Bat’s echolocation can be incredibly sophisticated, some can detect objects as fine as a spiders web.
Happy Hibernators
At this time of year bats have been building up their fat reserves and looking for hibernation sites to prepare for the upcoming winter months. During October bats might start to have periods of torpor, where they enter a state of decreased physiological activity. Their metabolic rate and body temperature will drop during these periods. The periods of torpor will get longer throughout November and by December bats will be hibernating until February or March when they will begin to occasionally emerge again for food.
Rahul Thanki (rspb-images.com)
Fuelling up for flight
All bats have very big appetites – flying uses up a lot of energy! The bat species found in Scotland are all insect eaters, dining on delicacies such as flies, moths, beetles, and spiders. A single pipistrelle can eat 3,000 gnats in just one night.
Why do we think of bats at Halloween?
Despite bats being ready to hide away for several months around Halloween each year they are still linked with the autumn holiday. They are an obvious choice to connect with Halloween due to their nocturnal nature and their reputation for drinking blood. In reality, only 3 species of bat feed on blood and all are native to South America – bit of a trip from Transylvania! Also responsible for the connection between bats and Halloween is Bram Stoker, creator of Count Dracula, whose novel cemented the connection between bats and vampires.
Bela Lugosi in Dracula, 1931 (archive.org)
If you would like to find out more about bats in the UK visit the Bat Conservation Trust
Have a happy Halloween!