Bats and Mosquitoes

I’ve been informed that bats eat mosquitoes. I don’t know if there are any bats in our neighborhood. And if there were, would it be a megabat or a microbat?

The megabat eats insects. Perhaps it would be good to have bats in areas where mosquitoes live. But I don’t know if the bat and the dragonfly would then be in competition for the mosquitoes – would the bats eat the dragonfly? It has been “said” that one bat can eat 600 mosquitoes in an hour. Hmmm …

I learned in a Wikipedia article that bats don’t like to fly in rain as it upsets their sense of location since they use “echos” to find where they should go.

I could go out at twilight when bats are active to see if there are any flying around. However …

When I was about 5 years old, we lived in a 3rd floor apartment building. There were cots in the living room and I was sleeping in one of the cots with a couple of other kids. All of a sudden someone screamed. There was something flying around in our living room.

As I recall, my mother turned on the light and asked everyone to put the bed sheet over their heads. We did so. The bat was flopping around trying to find its way and landed on someone’s head. I can’t recall if it was mine or not. My mother somehow killed it (a broom?) and put the bat in a plastic zippered sleeve with alcohol in it.

My mother was superstitious and believed that someone had sent the bat out to harm us. I don’t know if she still has the bat. About 15 years ago I recall seeing it in her possession.

Perhaps instead of building bird houses I should build bat houses to help the Minnesota mosquito population.

 

 

 

How would one know?

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