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bats do not make good companions.
they won't fetch slippers. they won't greet
you when you get home. they're ugly little
blighters, too. why the hell would you
want one?
Pest control. even a small bat will eat
approxiamately twelve tonnes of insects a
night (or something like that. i
swear. I
read it on the back of a gum wrapper. next
to the joke about the talking frog and
information on how many wrappers you
need to get a free gumco yo-yo).
anyway, if you could put the bat in a small
harness and a leash that allows it to fly,
train it not to act hostile towards you or
your person, it'd be ideal to have on nights
that are mosquito heavy. it'd be mutual.
mosquitos are attracted to humans, bats
eat mosquitos. plus, you wouldn't have to
take it out in the day, so no one would
know just how ugly the little bugger is.
I'm working on an idea about seeing eye
bats for blind people in the night, but I've
got nothing. if someone else wants to post
it, feel free.
The amount of bat intake should be in here somewhere.
http://www.bu.edu/cecb/BATS/batfacts.html
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Bat Conservation
http://batconservat...thouse/bathouse.htm
..this links to a guano-load of good info.. [bpilot, Oct 04 2004]
Bat-vectored deadly viruses
http://www.vetmed.w...ra/hendraindex.html
Hendra Virus, Nipah viruses etc etc [ConsulFlaminicus, Oct 04 2004]
Canadian bat diseases
http://www3.gov.ab....w/bats/disease.html
not nearly as much to be scared of. [schematics, Oct 04 2004]
[link]
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//they're ugly little blighters, too//
Terribly sorry my good man but I must contest this point. I found one unconscious bat outside a motel room, (long before meeting my significant other, of course), and kept it as a pet for a few weeks before releasing it. I'll be danged if the face of the thing didn’t look just like our border collies with maybe a bit more squint, and I swear it liked beer as much as I do. |
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Sorry 'bout that, back to your idea. |
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There have been bats in our attic since we have moved to this house and every year I have to go through the same arguments against getting rid of them.
I bet that if a study was done to determine the lack of West Nile Virus in bat infested areas we'd have a lot more flying rodents as house guests. (+) |
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I read somewhere that a bat eats 500 mosquitoes an hour, and there are plenty of programs to put out bat houses (like a bird house, but no floor) to encourage them. But frankly, the prospect of filling the room with 4,000 mosquitoes to keep it fed at night goes a little beyond the pale. |
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One small bat eats 12 tons of insects a night? Lets do the math on this...
1 ton=2000lbs, 1gal water=8lbs(rounded) |
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12tonsx2000lb=24000lb/8=3000gal. |
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typical night is 9 hours. 3000gal/9hrs=333.3g.p.h. |
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333.3gph/60=5.5 gallons per minute. Which is about half of what a fuel pump flows. So, if you consider insects as water, this is how much would flow through the poor little bat's posterior. That's alot of guano. This is why we don't learn biology from bubble gum wrappers. |
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Well, when I was a kid a bat used my room to hang
for several months (til my mother found about).
I could ear them then, but not anymore. They smell
a bit but are fascinating creatures. I'd love to have a flying fox as pet; did you see those soulful eyes?. |
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Hey, If guano is poisonous, just don't
eat it, okay? some days you worry me,
l3lackEyedAngels. |
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Or you could use the guano to set up a little cottage industry selling home made gunpowder thereby trading a slow death for several quick ones. |
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//if you consider insects as water.../// Don't. |
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//if you consider insects as water...//
then swimming pools are very scary. |
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No, Noo, Nooo! Experienced bat and flying fox handlers (such as moi!) now wear protective clothing and follow strict hygeine procedures when interacting with our little friends. The reason?...recent discoveries that they are critical vectors of some extremely nasty diseases, often fatal. |
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[link] the only reason we don't see thousands of fatalities is because man-bat interaction has been so limited. |
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I wondered about diseases, but if we are keeping them as pets why can't we vacinate them? |
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mmmmmm.... flying fox curry. Best made with FF from colonies resident near banana plantations. |
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hmm. as near as I can tell, bats in
canada are pretty harmless,
diseasewise. you'd have to vacinate
them for rabies, but that's about it.
beside most austrailian animals are just
generally scary. eek! wombats! |
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I take personal offense at your dislike of wombats! It's a long story. |
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Can you vaccinate bats? I guess that makes sense. I've
heard that bats can carry rabies without showing
symptons. And they are vectors for new diseases as well.
Bats = bad news. Every year in the US a bunch of people
die from rabies because they didn't realize how dangerous
bats are. |
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First hit on my google search bats+deaths+rabies+US: |
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How dangerous are bats?
Bat rabies accounts for approximately one human death per year in the United States. Thus, some people consider bats to be dangerous. Nevertheless, dogs which often are considered "man's best friend," attack and kill more humans annually than die from bat rabies in a decade. Statistically speaking, pets, playground equipment, and sports are far more dangerous than bats. Clearly, bats do not rank very high among mortality threats to humans. Nevertheless, prudence and simple precautions can save lives. |
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Lots of problems to solve, but it would be cool to have them bring back fruit. |
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<old joke>What do you do with a wombat? |
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I'm currently exploring the world of falconry (exploring cautiously, from a distance), and the approaches used in training are several steps removed from the approaches I used in training my wild mustang. |
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I can only wonder what it would take to train a bat. Specific kinds of hawks have a low enough success ratio in hunting that it's possible to train them that it's a more reliable meal ticket to hunt with your help than to go it alone. |
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But it only works with specific types. Fish-eating hawks carry their prey and eat it elsewhere, so they can't be trained in this manner. |
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Bats catch-and-swallow, so I don't know how you'd teach them to play on your team. I would think the leash would limit their effectiveness. |
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Bats were domesticated by the Assyrians
over 3500 years ago, and selectively bred.
Where on earth did you think chickens
came from? |
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Which came first, the hairy chicken or the bat's egg? |
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Teach it to play baseball. Then you would have a
domesticated baseball bat. |
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but bats already eat bugs by themselves. Domesticating them would be an extra unnecessary step. I mean, MAYBE you could raise the bug-destruction rate a LITTLE locally around your house, but, you know, same difference. |
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Bats = death! Oh dear. One of my more foolish hobbies invloves clambering about in old mines. Usually think of bats as cute little things that try to avoid cavers. Probably good in a curry:) |
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Could we not create a breed of dog that catches mosquitoes? |
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I'll take bat curry over dog curry any day. |
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Rats, cats and hats have all been domesticated. Bats are a
shoo-in. |
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