Yet another reason to love bats

It's no big secret that I dig the monkeys, but I also adore bats. What is not to love about them? And now here's a new reason to love our little friends in the order chiroptera:

Bats can be lured into large areas of destroyed rainforest with fake fruits, researchers have found. This, they say, could be the key to restoring patchy parts of the landscape.

South American leaf-nosed bats of the family Phyllostomidae defaecate the seeds of the fruits they have eaten as they fly. This process, known as 'seed rain', aids plant dispersal throughout the rainforest.

-- "Fake Fruits Could Help Restore the Rainforest," Nature, Feb 8, 07

That's right: by directing the bats via a few olfactory cues, there's a way to re-seed denuded rain forest in a way that is more in line with non-human-directed development. What a cool idea. Let's hear it for both the scientists and the bats!

Comments

[molly]

I love bats as well. A couple of years ago there used to be a bat that hung out above our front door that we named Boris. After Boris left, I had to go buy a bat house for the back deck. But now that we live in the city, I doubt we would ever have use for the bat house.

[Lisa]

You never know -- plenty of cities have bat populations.

Did I ever tell you about the bats in the basement in my first house in Troy? The big ol' brownstone on 5th street, two or three doors down from the junkies who burned down their place? I was down there one night doing laundry and this poor little guy dropped right onto the washer, completely disoriented.

So I called Kirsten Cooke -- who had formerly worked with wildlife -- and said, "This is a really weird question, but how do I make sure I don't kill this bat that I think woke up three months early?"

Kirsten told me to try and put him or her someplace dark and quiet, so I found an old aquarium and wrapped some towels around it, stuck the contraption in the back corner of the basement, and let him or her sleep back there. The bat disappeared later that spring.

I would love to put up a bat house in my current place, but I live on a corner next to many power lines, and we have so many cats in the neighborhood, I worry it would end badly.

[Ky]

I love bats, too. I actually have a necklace that has a bat on it.

What great news! One of my favorite beasties can help save the rain forest!