The Bat Camera

Submitted by Looduskalender on Thu, 13.02.2020 - 10:54
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The Bat Camera will show what are bats in Estonia doing in winter. Camera is focused into hibernating set of Pond Bats, that will stay in hibernacula from October until April and despite of hibernation bats are also moving there during the winter. During hibernation time, body temperature of bats will fall to couple of degrees above zero by Celsius and their heart rate will be about 20 beats per minute. In comparison, during the flight in summer their heart rate will be about 1000 beats per minute. Naturally bats will wake from hibernation about once per month during the winter and make a short flight in hibernacula. Such awakenings will take more than 80% of their energy reserved for a winter. Bats may wake also because of human appearance into their hibernacula and due to such unforeseen awakenings they may not have enough energy to survive until the spring. Therefore, it is very important not to visit large underground caves during the winter, because there may hibernate bats.

Beside of wintering, also breeding is very important time, when they gather in large numbers into colonies. Most dangerous is June, when bats will give birth and about one month after that when young bats are learning how to fly.

Bat Camera is a part of a EU LIFE project “Improving the Pond Bat (Myotis dasycneme) habitats in Estonia”, led by Estonian Fund for Nature in cooperation with Estonian Museum of Natural History.

Bats are also named as Animal of the year 2020 in Estonia. As bats and humans meet each other often, we should be careful that we do not hurt bats just because of the fear or lack of knowledge. During the year we try to rise the knowledge on bats and turn people attention into these little night flyers.

Forum of the Bat Camera is sharing on the web page an overview that is happening in front of the camera.

Bats in Estonian nature: 
Elfond.ee/nahkhiired

Exhibition is opened from today:

Hirmus armas nahkhiir

 

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