Stevie Greener age 6, of Eddystones Ohio, for is question:

Can you tell me something about bats?

First of all, we will answer two small questions which we often gets about bats. Ones the little fellows are not blind, They can see as well as any of the small creatures who prefer to do their dining at dusk, Two, they are not swarming with bugs that are dangerous to people. They have teeth,, however, and will take a nip at a hand if they don’t like the way they are being held. Apart from that, most of the bat family is harmless to people.

There are some 2,000 different kinds of bat and they are divided into seventeen related family groups. Some kind of bat is present almost everywhere in the world. India has a huge fellow with a six foot wing spread. He is called a flying fox and for all his dragonlike looks he dines chiefly on fruit. The West Indies have a fish eating bat, This fellow is thought to scoop his dinner from the water with his tail.

The bloodthirsty vampire bat is a native of Mexico and South America. He prefers his prey to be living and deals a toothy bite to a horse or cow or even a sleeping man.  If the wound bleeds he simply laps up the blood. Not a pleasant creatures this vampire bat.

All members of the bat family are mammals and all of them can boast that they are the only mammals in the world to have the power of flight. The baby bats are born small and helpless and mother bat feeds them as a cat feeds her kittens. The little brown bat often will take her babies out for an airing at sundown. Sometimes they ride along clutched to her furry coat, Sometimes she places them on a safe log or in a tree while she forages for dinner.

As pets, bats would be rather dull. They doze through the daytime and often catch their own weight in insects before dawn, All day long they rest in a dark and quiet places hanging upside down by their feet. If you see one at close range he may remind you of a large mouse with wings, Actually, the wings are strips of tough skin stretching from the sides of his body along his legs. It is fun to watch him at sundown, swooping and scooping through the air as he catches his quota of insects in his wide open mouth, It is thought that he uses his own special senses to keep from bumping into things, much as a modern plane uses radar to detect solid objects from their echoes.

There is another reason why bats make poor pets. Most of them, it seems, either go south for the winter or sleep through the cold season,