Ohio State Bat Pics

Here are some pictures of bats flying in the recording chamber at Ohio State. You can see the bones of the hand that make up the wings of the bats. You should also notice that their mouths are open, since they have to echolocate to keep from running into the wall as they fly! The last picture was actually used in a news report in the journal Science.

In captivity, it's common to feed the bats mealworms. The big brown bat is a good species to keep in captivity because they are generally pretty easy to care for. The problem is that they also tend to be a little piggish, so they sometimes get a little fat in captivity. We had to teach the bats to eat out of bowls, since they are normally going to feed on flying beetles. Once they learn how, they act just like this guy - grabbing the worms as quickly as they can!

Of course, they also sometimes don't understand that the food has to be put there by a human. Some of them, like the bat in this picture seemed to think that the worms appeared magically - they would sit with their heads in the food bowls for hours, waiting for more worms to appear. This particular bat was about 22 grams, which is really heavy for a big brown, so she didn't need any more food!

We also provided them with vitamin-enriched water (which is why the water looks kind of yellowish). The bats learned to crawl over the water dish and lap it up when they were thirsty, like this bat is doing.

The bats also like a little "private time" so they would hang behind a towel or other piece of cloth to get some sleep.

Big brown bats have delayed fertilization, so some of the bats that we got at OSU were pregnant when they arrived. The females would give birth in early April, almost always having two pups, a male and a female. The pups each weighed about 5 grams. You can see the pup has large feet and thumbs. This allows the pup to cling to its mother even if she's flying. This particular pup is about 24 hours old.

Bats grow very fast, so that the same bat looks like this three weeks later! This bat has a full coat of fur, its eyes are open, it can fly and it can echolocate as well. Obviously this is a remarkable amount of development for such a short period of time!

Ohio State Bat Pictures