It’s spooky season! Look at all the spiderwebs, bones and bats decorating your neighborhood.
Why not learn about the actual animals that inspire Halloween? Dive into one of the coolest critters — the eastern red bat.
Hey, good looking!
Can you guess what this bat looks like? Did you guess red? Smart. But these bats are not scary movie, blood red. They range from a rusty red to a brownish red to yellowish red. Males usually look a little brighter red because females often have white tips at the end of their hair.
They are built for cold weather, with lots of long, lush hair. Their fur covers their legs all the way down to their toes.
They even have a built-in blanket! This blanket is a membrane at their tail. Look at your own fingers. Spread them wide. Can you find the tiny flaps of skin that connect your fingers together? This bat membrane is kind of like that but thinner, way stretched out, bigger and covered with lots of fur. Eastern red bats can wrap that cozy fur blanket all around themselves, cocooning up against winter cold.
Eastern red bats are smaller than other bats around here. Their wingspan stretches about 3 1/2 inches to 4 1/2 inches. That’s about the length of a KitKat. (Full size, not fun size.) On the scale, they weigh in at half an ounce, which is equal to five pennies.
Loners rule this tree house
Do you ever feel like you need lots of alone time? You’d fit in well with eastern reds (from a distance, of course). They are mostly solitary creatures. The only time they hang out in groups are during migration and mothers with their pups.
Don’t look for these flying mammals in a cave. They roost in trees, napping during the day. Eastern reds will wrap themselves in their fur tail blanket, dangle from a branch by one foot and just twist in the wind. You’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between a leaf and a bat, even with their red coloring.
What do you think of their bedroom setup? Would you prefer a nocturnal schedule, staying awake all night and sleeping all day? Could you hang upside down from a tree branch to sleep? Try it the next time you climb a tree. Bonus points if you wrap yourself in a blanket while doing it! (Don’t actually go to sleep. That would be dangerous.)
They are one of the first bats to emerge after sunset. This is their time to hunt! Ignore the Halloween lore. These bats don’t want to suck your blood. They are the most active for the first few hours after sunset, stalking moths, beetles, leafhoppers and flying ants. Nursing mothers, on the other hand, will feed all night long!
Watch out, reds!
Eastern reds are not the top of the food chain. They must scan the skies for sharp-shinned hawks, American kestrels, merlins, loggerhead shrikes and great horned owls that will hunt them for a meal. Opossums also find this tiny tree ornament to be a delicious snack.
Puppy pals
Dogs are not the only animals to have pups — so do bats! Most bats have one pup at a time, but eastern red bats are known to have twins. Sometimes they will even have three pups at a time.
Follow the eastern red seasons
Will we see eastern reds during trick-or-treat season? Maybe. These bats hang out here from April to October. When the first major cold fronts come in, that’s when they start to head south. They will fly in flocks (called cauldrons!) as far south as Mexico. Read more about animal group names. Usually, females migrate together in separate groups from males.
Words to know
Dangle: To hang or swing loosely.
Membrane: A thin sheet of tissue acting as a boundary, lining or partition in an organism.
Solitary: Done or existing alone.
Winter is when they hibernate, often on the ground in leaf litter. They use their leaf trick again to blend in with all the other leaves around them, pulling their blanket membrane tight around them for camouflage and warmth.
As the weather warms, they return to Will County again to have their pups and raise them in our trees. At the end of summer and beginning of fall, eastern reds come together to mate and the cycle starts all over again.
As for this October, do you still need a costume for Halloween? Why not trick or treat as an eastern red bat?
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