Bats

[Abby Brown] Nahant Marsh, right next door to the city, is full of life. In the daylight, you'll see water, and flowers, and even some creatures! You'll hear, smell, and even get to touch pieces of the marsh. When the sun goes down, even more creatures reveal themselves--bats! There are nine species of bats here in Iowa. By using technology to capture the sounds of bats, people who work here at Nahant Marsh have found that eight of the nine species have actually been here!

[Jimmy Wiebler] Bats are really cool because they're mammals and they're really the only mammal that can fly. We certainly get bats out here and we actually do research on bats. We put out special monitors with microphones on them, and our microphones can pick up the calls of the bats. So a bat, they make calls just like birds do, but their call is so high frequency that we can't hear it with our human ears.

[Abby] And because bats are mostly active at night, they have mastered echolocation, which basically means that they use sound, and the echo of that sound, to find physical things. So bats make that sound, those sound waves travel through the air, and then bounce back to the bat's ears. From that, their brains are able to quickly figure out where things are located. Pretty cool right? Next time you're outside at sunset, or even in the dark, you won't hear bats, but you might catch a glimpse of one swooping down to catch a mosquito. Bats are very cool creatures that can be found in cities and in the country all over Iowa.

[Announcer] Funding for FIND Iowa has been provided by the following supporters.

(text on screen Find Iowa, Coons Foundation, Pella, REAP-CEP, Gilchrist Foundation)

(text on screen Iowa PBS Education)