Something of the night

No apologies for another corpse, they're usually the best way of examining an elusive beast. I found the deceased bat in our lane: maybe its echo location mechanism had failed among the branches or it had been overcome by the wet weather; in any case it had been reduced to a tiny morsel of damp fur on the ground. But the familiar shape sprang into view when I stretched out its wings, membranes of the utmost delicacy strung between the elongated digits of what are essentially its arms. The hook at the top is the thumb.

Like most nocturnal animals - wolves, foxes, owls and even cats - bats have acquired sinister and ambivalent associations in human culture, perhaps because of their liminal position vis-à-vis our lives: they are often uninvited guests in secluded parts of our own dwellings such as roofspaces, lofts and barns* and they take to the wing at the very time when we are retreating indoors.

The habits of the European bat are entirely blameless, their lives at once both modest and complex. They feast usefully upon the gnats and midges we detest and they tuck themselves away out of sight and out of mind before we rise, hanging neatly in their reclusive lairs like small folded capes. They do not get tangled in people's hair.

Reading about how they nurture their babies one can, I think, only marvel:

Once a year, in the spring, one young one is born, blind and naked. Before the birth the mother turns head up and drops the young bat into a pouch made by bending her tail forward. Then she lifts and cleans it and places at at her breast to which it clings with its teeth, while also holding on to the mother's fur with thumbs and hind claws. It stays there without hampering her flight for about a fortnight after which she removes it and hangs it up by its feet to be left during her flights, replacing it at the breast on her return. Towards autumn it begins to fly, apparently without teaching.

This one is a pipistrelle bat, the commonest species. Like all bats it uses its ears like satellite dishes, bouncing signals off its surroundings as it flies. Now, you can get a bat app for your smart phone that enables you to listen to their sounds and identify the species. In this clip about it you see a long-eared bat with much more impressive 'dishes' although the actual echo location mechanism is in the tragus or earlet, the small boney protrusion in front of the ear. (We also have it and some people get it pierced.)

* And even in army bunkers, which must be just about the only endearing consequence of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.