02/08/2007 Learning new things! Animal Facts

Students learning about animals in my recent classes have come up with some interesting facts on their lives.  Starting with bats, here are some of them.

Eastern Pipistrelles may live up to 8 years in the wild.

Big brown bats can swim well, but not take off from the surface of water like some smaller bats.

Little brown bats may wake up during hibernation and fly around outside on warm winter nights.

Males and females of many species do not use the same roost sites.

There is a minimum of 100 million Brazilian free tail bats in the US.  In Texas, they may consume 18,000 metric TONS of agricultural pests each year.

It takes young red bats about 5 weeks to learn to fly (from time of birth).  Triplets and quadruplets are common in this species.

Hoary bats usually have twins.

The Keen’s myotis carries its young babies with it while it hunts.  They may eat up to 3,000 mosquitoes per night.

The evening bat prefers to feed over corn fields where it eats insect pests.

The short trail shrew uses echolocation to investigate its environment, but not to find food.  Sight is very poor on this species.

Short tail shrews have poisonous saliva.

The pygmy shrew is smaller than some of our insects and has been observed sleeping in the burrows of beetles.

The star-nosed mole has an eimers organ on its nose that can detect electrical impulses from the muscles of prey species.  They also store fat on their tail which may swell with these deposits going into winter.  (Can you imagine two shrews talking “does my tail look too fat??”)

In good moist soil conditions, moles can tunnel 18 feet per hour.