Where are the Alaska bats now?
Originally published Sunday, October 12, 2008 at 12:00 a.m.
Updated Sunday, October 12, 2008 at 12:00 a.m.
Digg
delicious
Facebook
Mixx
Reddit
Stumble It!
FAIRBANKS — Eileen Weatherby of Fairbanks wrote in mid-September that her cat carried in a surprise one morning. Instead of the usual vole, her cat had captured a bat.
“I was startled because I thought bats in the Interior were pretty rare,” she wrote in an email message.
Eileen is right. Alaska is the far, frigid edge of bats’ existence. But they do live in Alaska, in places with trees, perhaps as far north as Fort Yukon. The palm-size creatures are now, in mid-October, avoiding below-freezing temperatures by either hibernating or migrating southward. Scientists aren’t quite sure which strategy far-north bats employ.
“I’ve had people tell me they know where bats hibernate in winter,” said Doreen Parker McNeill, who works at the Alaska Department of Fish & Game and who studied bats for her degree work at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Keith Price of Salcha once said he saw them hibernating in the utility corridors at Eielson Air Force Base.”
Price was an interested bat-watcher who shared his fondness for bats with scientists. The longtime resident of Salcha once stored his potatoes in a heated Quonset hut. Little brown bats, the only species of bat identified in interior Alaska, liked the hut so much that about 200 of them once lived in it, making the maternity bat colony there the farthest north in North America. Price invited scientists to visit his barn and study the bats. Among other things, they found that Alaska bats, both in Southeast and in Salcha, ate spiders.
“I hadn’t seen anything in the literature about bats eating spiders,” Parker McNeill said.
Alaska bats also eat moths, no-see-ums, and other flying insects, including mosquitoes.
“A colony of 500 little brown bats can easily consume 500,000 insects in a single night,” Jack Whitman wrote in an Alaska Department of Fish & Game’s Wildlife Notebook entry.
Little brown bats are the only species of bat found north of Southeast Alaska, where in 2005 and 2006, Julia Boland — then an Oregon State graduate student — captured California bats, long-legged bats, and Keen’s bats. She also saw and heard silver-haired bats. In addition, Boland found bats hibernating in caves of Southeast Alaska, but what do bats do farther north, where winter temperatures are too cold and dry to sustain their delicate bodies?
“In the Lower 48, banded hibernating bats were found 400 miles away (later in the year),” Parker McNeill said. “I know a little brown bat can migrate that far, but to say they’d cross the Alaska Range and be flying over a just-opened pond on May 8th (as someone reported to her) does seem pretty far-fetched. They could probably do it, but I don’t know.”
Parker McNeill thinks that we may subsidize hibernating bats with our heated structures; a man in Nenana called her once to report he heard bats within his walls all winter. Brian Lawhead of Alaska Biological Research, Inc. remembered a story of a person, also from Nenana, who was pullling firewood from a snow-covered pile when a bat fell out. The bat warmed up, and then flew off, suggesting it may have been hibernating under the snow. But such tales are rare in the far north.
“Hibernating bats have not been found in the Yukon,” wrote Tom Jung, a Yukon government biologist who lives in Whitehorse. “Some Yukon bats migrate in the spring as indicated by groups of bats observed passing over the St. Elias Mountains and glaciers, perhaps returning from coastal hibernacula.”
Valerie Baxter lives with her husband Dan on a farm in North Pole. Bats live at the farm in summer, but “the first time we get a hard frost, we quit hearing them,” she said. “And their scat deposition drops off — we just figure they’re gone.”
The mystery endures. Are bats among us now in northern Alaska, somehow keeping their wee selves from freezing solid, or are they now headed south, beating their tiny wings above the blue ice of glaciers?
“There’s a great PhD project there for somebody,” Lawhead said.
This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.
Community Discussion
Newsminer.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full user's agreement.
our cat caught and killed a bat 3 weeks ago. dont know how he got it!!
This summer while tearing down an old shed/barn on their homestead outside of Manley Hot Springs, The land owners were rather surprised when thousands of bats were discovered living in the roof.
It was a very old barn and the bats had obviously been living there for many years.
When the owners tried to contact the university for info on the bats and how to move them they were met with "bats don't live that far north"
Great article! I love the bats! I can't wait to show the kids this.
We had more bats this summer than usual. A few times they were swarming us, a bunch of 'em, flying right in front of our faces, then up and around! Happily eating the skeeters!
They eat spiders?! Crazy! Well, my girls'll like to hear that! Personally, spiders don't bug me.
I have been wanting to build a bat house for years in the hope of attracting more and getting them to stay. Maybe they're holed up in that old shed out back. I know the squirrels had been getting into the roof for years...maybe they share with bats...?
I hope somebody does do some studying on this. We would love to know what's up with the bats, and how to attract more and get them to stay.
Also, I miss my flying squirrels. Think too much land got cleared. Bummer.
We had bats for several years too. But haven't seen them for a few years now. We do still have flying squirrels. Our cat killed one a few weeks ago. Really awful! They are really tame and so cool looking!!!
A couple years ago, my cat came up with a bat out of a pile of brush. Makes sense to hang out there for a little while where the spider snacks live. We've had them try to hibernate in the baggage makeup area out at the airport too.
Haven't had them roosting, that I'm aware of...but have had them find their way into my bedroom. Yikes!! Scared the bejeesus out of me, at first. Then one flew up and over the chair I was sitting in during the dawn twilight, WOW! It hovered directly in front of me, swooped and took off. I've been watching for them ever since.
Anyone know how to build a bat house condusive to our species of bat?
MrsS
Here's some interesting links...
http://www.batconservation.org/content/b...
http://alaskaoutdoorjournal.com/Ecology/...
http://www.essortment.com/all/howtobuild...
Loved the bat pics in the article!
-jen
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.