By Jim Marzuki
Originally published in Thorn Creek News, May 1991.

Bats are among the most beneficial, least understood and most maligned animals in the world

In the United States you’re most apt to see bats swirling around a streetlight or pulling five G’s in an Immelmann as they devastate your local mosquito population. At debugging, bats wrote the book. Bats are the only major predators of night flying insects and one gray bat may eat up 3000 insects in a single night. Now, honestly, can you touch that with your blue-light bug zapper or your spray can? No way.

Bats are, in truth, very gentle, intelligent little animals.

Chances are that you have never seen a bat up close. You’ve probably seen pictures, often taken by a know nothing photographer who has teased the bat into a snarling position so as to represent a vicious animal. Actually bats are, in truth, very gentle, intelligent little animals. There are many myths which have grown up over the years maligning the bat which just aren’t true. Some people believe that bats are rodents, kind of a flying mouse. Wrong. Bats are much more closely related to man than to mice. And unlike mice, reproduce slowly—-in most species producing one baby per year. Some bats have funny ears, some funny noses, but by and large are beautiful animals. Outsize ears and nostrils on some . . . Thorn Creek News Summer 2017