Why House Bats?
Bats have long been maligned by humans -- a taboo, a creature to be shunned. These little furry animals that fly seemed to be half-bird, half-mammal, and looked ugly.
But today they are being given their proper recognition as valuable to mankind in the ecological system. Many plants, such as bananas and the endangered saguaro cactus, are dependent upon bats for pollination because they bloom at night. Bats are also responsible for 95% of the reforestation of the tropical rain forests through their dispersal of seeds.
Their immediate appeal to most people is their enormous capacity for consuming insects. A nocturnal animal, the bat eats when the insects are out, in contrast to birds, which eat during the day. Some bat species consume half their weight in a night -- as many as 600 or more gnat-sized insects an hour!
A single little brown bat (Myotis lucifugas) or big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus), some of the most abundant and widespread bats in North America, can eat 3,000 to 7,000 mosquitoes each night, and a bat can live to be 20 years old. That's a pretty effective insecticide, especially when you consider that it doesn't poison other creatures or make holes in the ozone layer!
