Bat Facts

• Bats are mammals, which mean that they have hair or fur on their bodies and are warm blooded. The babies feed on their mothers milk.
• Bats are the only mammal that can fly (though other mammals like the flying squirrel can glide when jumping from tree to tree)
• A bat’s wing resembles a giant hand with thin skin stretched between the long fingers and the bats body.
• Although they look a bit like mice with wings, bats are in fact more closely related to people than to mice.
• There are 16 species of bat in Britain. We used to have 17 species but in 1991 the greater mouse-eared bat became extinct in this country. Many others of our bats are getting more and more rare.
• All British bats eat insects. Our smallest bat, the pipistrelle, can eat up to 3000 midges in a single night!
• Bats find their way round at night by shouting in a high pitched voice and listening for the echo to rebound off the things around them. This is called echolocation.
• Britain’s largest bat is the noctule bat. It’s echolocation shout is four times louder than the legal limit for a night club but thankfully is too high pitched for us to hear.
• Bats sleep in the day then come out to hunt at night

Bat Crossword

Across

• 2. Bats come out to hunt at ______
• 7. Bats find their way in the dark using ______________
• 9. Bats are ____ blooded
• 10. Bats _____ in the day

Down

• 1. All British bats eat ________
• 3. Bats are the only mammal that can ___
• 4. In 1991 in Britain the greater mouse-eared bat became ______
• 5. A bat wing resembles a giant ____
• 6. Britain’s largest bat is the _______ bat
• 8. Baby bats feed on their mothers ____

Check out the bat facts for the answers!

Bat Jokes

1.Why did the horseshoe bat brush his teeth?
Because he had bat breath!

2.Two bats are hanging from the roof of a cave when they see a group of people walking towards them. One bat turns to the other and says “How come the blood doesn’t rush to their feet?”

3.A vampire bat flys back into his cave with his mouth covered in blood. The other vampire bats hanging up there ask him where he got the blood and rub their stomachs hungrily.
“Well,” says the first bat, “If you follow me I will show you”, so he flies back out of the cave with the others following, down into the valley and towards the woodland. He then stops and turns to the other bats and pointing a wing says “Do you see that tree over there by the river?”
“Yes!” reply the other bats excitedly”
“Well I didn’t” he replies.

4.How did the female pipistrelle bat attract the male?
By batting her eyelids!
(from Simon Keith, aged 7)