Natural Redheads: Red Bats

Red bats wear a long, soft coat ranging in brilliant burnt orange-red on males to golden brown on females. White shoulder patches give a frosted tint to their fur. The auburn color camouflages them in the sycamore and elm trees they most prefer. They often wrap themselves completely in their heavily furred tail. Hanging upside-down, by one foot , they blend in with the leaves.

These bats are found from Canada, throughout the United States, down into South America. Their habitat is in dense wooded areas. Red bats are rarely seen inside caves. They migrate from the north to warmer climates, hibernating in tree hollows or woodpecker holes. Red bats can adjust their own metabolic rate to insure survival at sub freezing temperatures during hibernation.

The Red bat uses the same Atlantic seaboard route as many birds on their long distance migration south. In the 1800's, there were large migrating flocks seen passing overhead in the daytime. There hasn't been any such sightings in this century.

Mating takes place in flight. Mating season occurs in August or September but the sperm is stored until spring, usually March or April. The Red bat is one of the few bat species to bear more than one young. Females give birth to a litter of twins each year, triplets and quadruplets are also common. To accommodate her offspring, female red bats have four mammary glands, where most bats have only two nipples.

Red bats use echolocation to locate insects using both broadband and narrow band calls. Search phases project sound, using echoes to judge the distance and direction of prey. The hunt for food begins at dusk. When people are out walking in the evening and think the bats are swooping down on them, they are usually going after a moth.

In nature's dance, the moth and the bat have co-existed for eons. Research has been conducted at Wake Forest on how moths mimic sounds to survive. In response to the sonar bats use to find them, moths make ultrasonic clicks of their own. Jesse Barber, a doctoral student of biology, has been working on this study for four years. They found the moths broadcast specific sounds, warning they are of a type known to taste bad to the bats.

Red bats are solitary creatures, unlike other bats who live in colonies. They come together only to mate or migrate. Female red bats even remain on their own, raising their whelps. Their many predators include birds of prey, opossums and cats.

Bats are the most vocal mammals beside humans but they sing at a frequency too high for us to hear. Singing songs of complex syllables to communicate, similar to birds. Each male bat has its own unique courtship song. Scientists at Texas A & M, hope studying the bat sounds will lead to better treatment for human speech disorders.

Sources:

http://www.batconservation.org/content/Redbatinfo.html

www.biology.eku.edu/bats/redbat.html