Krista Patriquin

The truth about bats

Why are there so many myths about bats? You know, that they get tan­gled in your hair. That they’d suck all your blood given a chance. That they’ll turn you into a vampire.

Those batty ideas highlight that most people don’t know the truth about the much-maligned mam­mals, says PhD student Krista Patriquin. 

She’s just spent the summer at Dollar Lake Provincial Park, where she’s been investigating the roost­ing social structure of the northern long-eared bat, alias Myotis septentrionalis.

About the same size and colour as the little brown bat, Nova Scotia’s most common bat species, it has a duller coat and larger ears.

A quick bit of background: Most bats found in Canada live in trees during the summer. Females congregate in roosts, where they give birth and raise their pups as a group. (Males, on the other hand, live apart and have no role to play in raising their young.) For years, biologists have been trying to determine the kinds of trees preferred by female bats, in an effort to conserve those trees.

Observing the roosts exposed the 31­-year-old researcher to a social structure as complex as what’s found in a typical high school. Females didn't stay in the same tree, but switched roosts every couple of days or so. Moreover, the gals didn’t move as an entire group to the next tree – some stayed, some moved on, some joined other cliques.

“This pattern is classically observed in elephants, dolphins and chimpanzees and is known as fission-fusion society,” explains Ms. Patriquin. “Fission meaning breaking up, fusion meaning joining.”

She speculates the bats that spend more time together are probably closely related – and she’s taking her theory to the lab where she’ll take a peek at their DNA.

“Even though there are 1,100 species of bats in the world, we know very little about them,” she says. “They hide very well.

They’re hard to catch. And they’re active at night… but those challenges just make the results that much more worthwhile.”

– Marilyn Smulders