Iowa Mammals
Mammals are warm-blooded, have a
back-bone, are hairy, and have mammary glands that produce milk to feed their
young. Mammals live on all continents and in all oceans. Iowa has 40 species of mammals that are
considered common in the state. Iowa’s mammals live in woodlands, prairies,
waterways, farm fields, and towns. They are adapted to a wide variety of
habitats.
Iowa Wildlife Series – Iowa
Mammals
Creature Feature – Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus)
The big brown bat is the most widely distributed bat in Iowa. Big brown
bats live in a variety of places including urban and rural areas in attics,
barns, caves, mines, bridges, and trees. They hibernate during the cold winter
months.
Big brown bats average 3 ¾ - 5
inches in length including their tail. They have a brown body and brown-black
wings and ears. They have a broad, round tragus (membranous projection) in
their ear.
Big brown bats, like all Iowa bat
species, are insect eaters. They are often seen in yards as they forage for
food. Bats are very beneficial - a single a bat can eat as many as 3,000
mosquitoes in a single night! Big brown bats prefer moths and beetles although
they do eat their fair share of mosquitoes too! Bats are nocturnal and emerge
from their roosts each night at dusk to eat.
Like
most bats, big brown bats use echolocation
to navigate in the dark and to locate food. Bats produce high-frequency sound
waves using their nose or mouth. When
the sound hits an object an echo bounces back to the bat's large funnel-shaped
ears. The bat can instantly identify an
object by the sound of the echo. Bats can even tell the size, shape and texture
of even a tiny insect from the echo. Although
bats rely on echolocation they are not blind as is commonly believed.
All bats are members of the order
Chiroptera - which is the second largest mammalian order in the world. Bats are long-lived animals despite their
small size. Big brown bats can live up to 20 years although their average life
span is in the wild is shorter than that.
Links
IDNR: Education – Classroom
Resources (go to the Document Library at the bottom of the page for fact sheets
and activity sheets!)
Birds of Iowa: Bats of Iowa – Big
Brown Bat
IDNR: White-Nose Bat Syndrome
Bat Conservation International
Book
List
Ackerman, D., and M. D. Tuttle.
1997. Bats: Shadows in the Night. Random House Children’s Books.
Altenbach, J. S., T. L. Best, and
M. J. Harvey. 2011. Bats of the United States and Canada. John Hopkins University Press.
Bash, B. 2004. Shadows of the
Night: The Hidden World of the Little Brown Bat. Sierra Club Books for Children.
Carney, E. 2010. National
Geographic Readers: Bats. National
Geographic Children’s Books.
Carson, M. K., and T. Uhlman. 2010. The Bat Scientists. HMH Books for Young Readers.
Haffner, M., and H. B. Stutz.
1998. Bats!: Amazing
and Mysterious Creatures of the Night. Cengage Gale.
Jennings, J. F. G., and L. A.
Hoehn. 1996. Bats: A Creativity Book for Young Conservationists. Bat Conservation International.
Tuttle, M. D. 2005. America’s
Neighborhood Bats: Understanding and Learning to Live in Harmony with Them. University of Texas Press.
Tuttle, M. D., M. Kiser, and S.
Kiser. 2005. The Bat House Builder’s Handbook. Bat Conservation International.
