Stanley Gehrt
Harold Henderson (HH): In your article in the March issue of Chicago Wilderness Journal you called bats “perhaps the most efficient predatory mammals.” What does that mean? How many fewer bugs do we have because bats ate them?
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HH: Don’t bats fly differently from birds anyhow?
SG: Yes, birds are stronger and more linear flyers. Bats rarely fly in a straight line, they tend to flutter and change direction constantly, and they have very quick wing beats.
HH: Does it matter what’s in the patch?
SG: The bat detector is a rectangular box, about nine inches tall, six inches wide, and only two or three inches deep, with a little microphonelike receiver on top. It detects the ultrasonic frequencies emitted by bats echolocating [as they fly] and any other ultrasonics. It was fun to point the bat detectors at televisions, computers, air conditioners and see what you could hear. Air conditioners are one of the worst. Put it right next to a car–no ultrasonics. This reminded us that there’s a different world out there that we aren’t aware of but bats are. They have a different hearing spectrum, so we don’t always know what they’re responding to.
HH: That’s not why people go into wildlife biology!
