Save a bat - build a bat house.
The heat is killing our bats. They’re crowding in beneath the old I Street Bridge - perhaps to keep cool - and the littlest and youngest are getting pushed out and falling to their death.
Why should we care? It’s not just sad from an animal lover’s view. Bats are really important, because they . . .
- help control insect populations, and thereby serve an integral part in ensuring ecological health. One thing they love to munch on: mosquitoes. See earlier post about the aerial spraying being planned for Yolo County.
- are really, really old. There are bat fossils that date back to over 50 million years ago. Anything that’s lived that long, folks, deserves a few seconds of our time. So read on.
- are really, really smart. Like dolphin smart. Check this out.
- are, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department and assorted others, including UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology, probably more accurately classified as primates, not rodents. So, the whole Die Fledermaus thing is just wrong.
Solution to downtown’s dying bat problem: build your own bat house.
A fun project for you and the kids that will give these little fellas another place to call home. Added perk: a little private army to protect you and yours from pesky disease carrying insects.
Fortunately, the ones in my belfrey are still doing just fine.
oh, and bats aren’t blind either. just like pigs not having sweat glands - that whole “blind as a bat thing” is a frustrating old idiom whose time has passed! stop bat ignorance today!
“…are classified with primates, not rodents…”
Ummm… No. Those three (bats, primates and rodents) are in three different Orders. It looks something like that:
Kingdom Animalia >>> Phylum Chordata>>> Subphylum Vertebrata>>> Class Mammalia:
Order Chiroptera (bats)
Order Rodentia (rodents)
Order Primates (primates)
“So, the whole Die Fledermaus thing is just wrong.”
What does Die Fledermaus have to do with anything (since they are not classified with primates)?
BTW, I watched that Operetta (the Russian version of it though) and…still don’t see how that could possibly be “wrong”… Could rodents be the answer? ;)
Blunter, from my research on the issue, the jury’s still out on where exactly bats fall. I wasn’t trying to be misleading, and to the extent that your comments were geared towards broadening the discussion to reveal the various theories about the classification of bats, I do appreciate them.
However, your comments seemed to carry an air of certainty as to the matter, and that I disagree with. The US Dept of Fish and Wildlife, and the UC, among others, entertain the theory that bats may be more closely related to primates than rodents. Reasonable minds can differ, and it seems to me like more research is necessary before anyone can give a definite yes, or in your case “Umm… No” about the issue.
Cheers - TT
Several points TT:
1. The fact that scientific community “entertains” the idea of possibly reclassifying and reorganizing the existent taxonomy does not imply that any changes to that taxonomy have been made. Thus making your “probably more accurately classified as primates” statement a wild, unbased speculation to say the least.
2. Even in the UC links you provided (Chiroptera systematics,the Tree of Life sub link) on the subject of bat monophyly it states: “Because the vast majority of available data strongly support a sister-group relationship between Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera, bat monophyly is now regarded as a very strongly supported hypothesis.”
(Which means that both the Micro- and Megachiroptera come from a single, shrew-like, gliding ancestor, and that they did not evolve independently from two different groups of non-flying mammals, like primates, as the diphyly hypothesis would suggest.)
3. “…bats may be more closely related to primates than rodents.”(TT)
This is a reasonable statement. But it is not in your essay. Why?
4. And, perhaps, the most important part:
The proposed link between the primates and the bats is based primarily on the findings related to a unique brain organization shared by flying lemurs, primates and flying foxes (Megachiroptera). Megachiroptera are found only in the Old World tropics of Africa, India and Australoasia. Not in North America. And since you are talking about a city in North America, namely Sacramento, it is Microchiroptera you are most likely referring to. But they are not even a part of the bat - primate connection debate…
“…and it seems to me like more research is necessary…”(TT)
Indeed!
I understand and happen to share your desire to help those little critters. I just don’t think that misrepresenting the facts (in this case unintentionally, I suppose) will help your case…
Bats are not classified as Primates, they have their own Order - Chyroptera. (wink)
Blunter
I think Blunter should get his or her own blog. (wink)
TT
it’s not like TT was advocating for intelligent design here . . . .