Bat Lady Barbara Visits!

What an exciting day we had on Monday. We studied a unit on bats with a culminating event of a visit from Bat Lady Barbara! The students were beyond excited! This is an event they will surely always remember. Thanks goes to Mr. Ficken for discovering her and inviting her to our school.

Here are a few pictures of bats that she has mounted in frames.

Here we see her feeding a Silver-Haired bat that she is helping to nurse back to health. This bat will go into hibernation in a couple of weeks. She will release the bat in April to the wild.

She is feeding the Silver-Haired bat a meal worm. The students studied meal worms in first grade in science.

The students were able to see a bat up close, but NO touching!

Displaying the difference between the size of a bumblebee bat and a fox faced bat.

Bats like to hang upside down unless they are going to the bathroom or giving live birth in which they hang right side up and hold on by their thumbs!

Vampire bats drink the blood from livestock and birds. Their teeth are so sharp that their prey does not even feel the cut. Vampire bats only need six teaspoons of blood for a night feeding. These varitety of bats do not live in North America and dispite popular belief, they do not turn into vampires.

Wing span of a fruit eating bat. Bats are very important for the health of our Earth. They eat thousands of misquitos, insects that are a nuisance to farmer's crops, and they spread pollen that we use in bubble gum, vanilla spice, and bannanas!

We felt very fortunate to have Bat Lady Barbara who showed us a slide show of pictures of various bats. They have some interesting faces, noses, and ears! Did you know that bats can actually see? Echolocation is their amazing ability to hear in the dark. Did you know bats can walk with their wings? Ask your student what s/he learned about bats.