CLEMSON, S.C. — With Halloween a day away, a Clemson University researcher who studies bats wants people to swap fright for a little respect when they spot the small flyers overhead at dusk.
Ben Neece, who studies bats for Clemson’s Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, leads the school’s Southeast Bat Hub. He said the old fear that a bat will dive into someone’s hair has it backward. The animals are far more likely to steer clear of people, and one passing overhead on an evening walk is not on the attack.
Another myth he pushes back on is blindness. Bats can see, and most of them also find their way and their prey with echolocation, sending out bursts of high-pitched sound people cannot hear and reading the echoes to judge how far away things are and what shape they take.
Many bats in the Upstate are tiny, roughly the size of a mouse, though the hoary bat, the biggest species in the United States, also lives in this part of the country. Tropical flying foxes, by contrast, can have wings that stretch nearly as wide as a grown person’s arms.
Neece said bats are the only mammals that truly fly, and most American species eat insects while others drink nectar, so they help keep bugs in check and pollinate plants. Tracking which species turn up, and how many kinds, also gives researchers a read on how healthy a habitat is.
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