How are bats transformed into mobile insect suppression
machines to replace the chemical pesticides that pose a
danger to water sources, wild animals and the public health
in general?
A program developed at the Society for the Protection of
Nature's Mammalians Center was presented. According to the
program the bat can serve as a natural alternative to
pesticides, and various steps can be taken to help preserve
species that are currently in danger of extinction, such as
providing food and preparing lodging sites.
There are 30 different species of bat in Israel, representing
more than one-third of all mammal species. The most common
one is the fruit bat, which subsists primarily on fruit and
is most commonly found in urban areas. Other types of bats
subsist on microbes, bugs, mosquitoes and moths.
Not long ago, fruit bats were suspected of causing crop
damage and were poisoned to death, diminishing their numbers
significantly. Others also died of secondary poisoning after
feeding off of various insects that had been poisoned by
pesticides. But since the 1980s there has been an attitude
change toward bats, and the possibility of using them as
"natural pesticide" is now being examined.
According to the plan, bats and bugs would be specially
brought together into one area so that the bats would eat the
insects. The planners are now investigating how to bring both
of them under the same roof. The bats would be lured using
sophisticated sleeping compartments that would allow them to
sleep by day, while the insects would be lured using focused
light sources installed near these sleeping compartments.
Thus a community consisting of two species living side by
side would be formed; the bats would then eradicate their
neighbors and go to sleep on a full stomach without having to
search high and low for their dinner. If this fascinating
experiment succeeds, similar sites would be set up to attract
bats, and eventually would lead to reductions in the use of
chemical pesticides.
An device is used to record the sounds made by bats and help
with the development of the new program. The bat produces
various pitches too high for the human ear to detect. The new
device translates these sounds into pitches that fall within
the range of human hearing, allowing researchers to learn how
to identify the sounds characteristic of each of the species,
and to categorize the 30 different species according to local
population distribution. So far 20 types of sounds belonging
to various bat species have been identified.
