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Information
Bats
feed at night. Most locate their food and navigate by
uttering a continuous series of ultrasonic cries that
return as echoes when the cries hit solid objects. In
the daytime they seek shelter in a wide variety of places:
caves, mines, buildings, rock crevices, under tree bark
and amid foliage. When resting and hibernating, bats
can lower their body temperature to nearly match the
environment and thus lower their motabolism and conserve
energy. Bats are an important part of the natural system.
They help control nocturnal insects, some of which are
agricultural pests or annoying to man. Many forms of
cave life depend upon the nutrients brought in by bats
and released from their guano (feces). And bats have
contributed much to man's knowledge through scientific
studies of their echolocation abilities, their biology
and certain aspects of their physiology. Bat populations
have been declining at an alarming rate in recent years.
Some of the more important causes of this decline are
destruction of habitat, pesticides and disturbance.
Loss of roosting and foraging habitat has resulted from
reservoir construction, watershed development, forest
conversion, urbanization and cave commercialization.
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