Chag Sameach!

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years.

A photograph of a mother and baby lesser louse tailed bat
A very sweet photo from a wonderful project going on along the Jordan River. Please check out the project at www.batsinbunkers.org.

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. Since it’s Hanukkah, I thought it would be nice to research Israeli bats. Don’t worry, I’m still keeping my promise to little Freda. I just haven’t found the perfect “sponsor candidate.” I’ll let everyone know as soon as I have someone in mind.

So, the first thing I learned about Israel and bats is that there are a lot of them! Apparently, every part of Israel has bats living there! They have 33 different kinds of bats! I think that’s amazing because Israel isn’t really a huge country. It’s about the size of New Jersey. They have one kind of fruit bat and 32 different kinds of insectivore bats.

I read an old article about Israel’s bats. The article was written last summer and was telling people about Israel’s Bat Night celebration. Apparently, people in Israel (just like here) sometimes think that bats aren’t the most awesome creatures out there, so the Israel Nature and Parks Authority uses Bat Night as an opportunity to teach people about all the amazing things that bats do for us. So, if any of you will be in Israel during the last weekend of August, they seem to have a pretty cool Bat Night celebration. You can read about it here.

After I found out that Israel has so many different kinds of bats, I thought it would be nice to do a little more research. What I learned is really amazing! Scientist have discovered 2 kinds of bats in Israel that hibernate at room temperature! This kind of hibernation is much more energy efficient than the way other bats hibernate. I thought it was a very interesting article. If you want to read it, I found it here.

I hope everyone enjoys learning about Israeli bats as much as I did. And I hope everyone has a very HAPPY HANUKKAH and a HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON!

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