Bats

by THOMAS BARBOUR

1

MOST people dislike bats intensely. It would be no very difficult task to fill many pages with the strange stories which reach far back into the early days of man’s thinking concerning these creatures that fly like birds, bite like beasts, hide by day, and see in the dark. Bats typify a curious duality of nature. One of Aesop’s fables depicts this ambiguous state. In it, a bat that falls to earth is seized by a weasel, who, when the bat pleads for his life, replies that he is by nature an enemy of all birds. The bat protests that he is no bird, and on this pretext is given his liberty. Later the bat is captured by a second weasel. This one tells the bat that mice are his favorite meat; whereupon the bat protests that he is a bird, not a mouse, and again secures his release.

Many of our Indians have superstitions about bats. The Pomo Indians of California depict them as experts in arrow-making. Having been given a large piece of obsidian, a bat put it into his mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed it. Presently he vomited forth a great quantity of excellent arrowheads, for which the other bats prepared shafts and feathers. Possibly the association of a bat with arrowheads refers to the bigeared species of southern California, Otopterus californicus, which has on the end of the snout an erect and prominent nose-leaf, shaped like an arrowhead.

In Europe there persists the deep-rooted superstition that bats are very fond of fat, and frequently gnaw the hams and bacon which in former times were often hung to cure in chimneys. It is said that the style of roof formerly in common use, with its short, steep pitch in front and long slope at the back, was designed to give easier access to the spacious chimney tops for hanging these meats. Aldrovandus assures us that if a ham is suspended from a ceiling without touching the floor, it will be found to show gouges where the bats have eaten from it. All the older natural-history books mention this supposed fondness of bats for bacon, a taste reflected in their German name of Speckmaus. No doubt, too, the same thing is implied in our traditional nursery rhyme: —

In England as well as in New England the supposition exists that bats love to fly into a woman’s hair, where they get themselves so completely involved as to necessitate the shaving of the head. The hair must be shaved, so runs the legend, because of the plentiful supply of lice which the bat leaves behind. Where and how this notion originated I have never been able to discover. It is deeply embedded in our American folklore.¹

It is curious that in Cuba, where bats are perhaps more ubiquitous than in any other country, they have occasioned almost no local superstitions. Cubans are very easygoing: they do not mind bats in their houses. In the country, they seem to expect that bats are going to be there, and that’s that. The pungent aroma connected with their presence, once it has settled upon a certain attic or other haunt, is extremely difficult to eradicate. But in Cuba one soon becomes accustomed to the typical “bat smell.”

To the best of my knowledge, there are probably twenty-three species of bats inhabiting the island of Cuba. Four of these have not yet found their way into the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard University. Most of the others I have caught — some rarely, others on innumerable occasions. The commonest species is a house bat, Molossus tropidorhynchus (Gray), which occurs all over Cuba. We have specimens from Pinar del Rio, Habana, San Antonio de los Baños, Matanzas, and Nueva Gerona in the Isle of Pines. The species abounds about Soledad, and I have seen them swarm in Cienfuegos.

Throughout Spanish America, where tiled roofs are used, this house bat appears regularly just after sundown. No other species flies as early as this one, and none in such incredible numbers. A person dwelling in a house where a colony of these little rat-tailed bats lives under the roof will hear them begin to scuttle around and bicker and squeak about sundown. Then, when just the right degree of dusk has arrived, they scurry to their openings and drop into the air, one by one, to take wing and scatter with extraordinary rapidity of flight.

iFor this material on the folklore of bats, I am indebted to my friend, Glover Allen, whose book Bats was published by the Harvard University Press in 1939.

Colonies may vary from twenty or thirty individuals to many thousands; the bat population of a city like Habana is difficult to estimate, but certainly impossible to exaggerate. Watch from the roof of a tall building — you won’t have to wait long, for the interval between daylight and dark in the tropics is very short — and all of a sudden the streets and housetops will swarm with these little bats. Before it is really dark they will all have scattered and disappeared. They return to their abode in the morning when it is darker than at the hour of their emergence. They sometimes fail to emerge in inclement weather, and in pleasant weather they may come back to rest for an hour or two in the middle of the night. I suspect this takes place when hunting has been very good. At dawn they are less conspicuous than at dusk.

In this species colonies may be predominantly male or female or, unlike so many species, may be mixed. Their young are born usually in early March.

Dr. Charles Minot of the Harvard Medical School once asked me to preserve for him a series of bat embryos so that he might study the early development of their teeth. I went to the old cavalry barracks in Pinar del Rio and, wearing a pair of heavy gloves, filled several sacks with bats of this species from an enormous colony. I carried them back to the old Hotel El Globo, where Professor J. L. Bremer and his wife were staying with my wife and me, and, as it was nearing the hour for our evening meal, I put my catch in a bathtub. I intended to return later, kill them, and search for the embryos.

This particular day happened to be the twentyfourth of February, the anniversary of the Revolution of Baire, corresponding to our Fourth of July, and tables for a great banquet were spread in the patio of the hotel. Arc lights had been suspended over the long tables. The top of the patio had been covered with wide tarpaulins because the weather was threatening. We had our dinner in a retired situation up on the roof, and had been urged to finish early so that all the domestic staff might be on hand for the official function. After we had finished, and while we were smoking before setting to work at our grisly task, I heard a commotion which grew louder and louder.

It didn’t take long to discover the fact that our transom was open. A sack of bats unfortunately had been insecurely tied, and bats were pouring out and buzzing around over the banquet tables. Every once in a while, in their dazed condition, one connected with an arc light and fell — flopping anywhere, even on the snowy napery. It took only a moment to close the transom, tie up the sack with such bats as remained, and keep ourselves strictly out of sight. From the remarks we overheard, it was obvious that there was a feeling abroad that possibly the Gringos had pulled a dirty trick.

We killed the bats, extracted and preserved the embryos, and then had a mass of bloody carcasses on our hands. Early the next morning I went out and bought a cheap suitcase, got a lot of newspapers, and packed up the bat bodies. We took the noon train to Habana. The weather was very warm, and by the time we arrived, our bats had become aromatic. Although we had been well known for years at the Ingleterra Hotel in Habana and our vagaries caused little surprise, I felt, nevertheless, that the bats must be disposed of, and that right promptly.

Rosamond and I drove to the waterfront after dinner in the early evening. I chartered a rowboat, and in the dark we moved quickly to where the wreck of the Maine lay completely unguarded — since in a few days it was to be towed out to sea and sunk. I don’t know what imp whispered in my ear, but I ran up the gangway of the old wreck, tossed in the satchel of bats, and heard it plunk far down, deep in her hold. She went to the bottom of the Gulf Stream off Morro Castle with the bats aboard.

2

THERE are no true fruit bats of the Megachiroptera in the American tropics — nothing to correspond to those giant creatures one sees in clustered colonies hanging in the trees even of the public parks in India or the East Indies. But there are in Cuba some forms belonging to the Microchiroptera or insectivorous bats which have become fruit and flower eaters.

The fruit-eating bat of Cuba, Artibeus jamaicensis parvipes (Rehn), is a very large one as American species go. It is allied to the myriad insectivorous forms, but it is not so devastating a pest as the East Indian fruit bat. But fruit they do eat, and if you listen at evening from the porch of a house shaded by almendro trees, you will occasionally hear the heavy seeds fall on the roof or to the ground. You may then be sure that the creature is about, and in the morning you will find the big almond-like fruits neatly cleaned off.

Common and widely distributed all over the island, this bat occurs in a considerable variety of situations. In the deep, dark caves it is the first species that one encounters on entering, and in caves that offer only partial darkness this bat is often found where no other species finds the situation to its liking. Sometimes colonies of individuals take up their abode in trees having a thick, green foliage, such as the sapodilla.

There are specimens in our collection from various localities in Pinar del Rio and Habana Provinces, eastward to La Cueva de la Patana near Maisí. This, in my experience, is one bat which appears to twin as often as it produces single young. The young are born in early March and remain hanging fast to their mother’s body until they reach a size that makes it almost impossible for her to fly about with them. Nor is this species at all disinclined to fly out into daylight if aroused. In fact, it is singularly tolerant of daylight and when disturbed it may remain outside its cave for considerable periods, hanging up in the crevices of rocky cliffs or in trees or bushes.

William Palmer believed this to be a common bat of western Culm. Though he never found any roosting in trees, he often noted pollen on the fur. Like Gundlach, he found colonies in dilapidated old buildings at Muriel and Caloma on the north and south coasts of the western end of the island. He also found this bat on the isle of Pines.

The big-eared bat, Otopterus waterhousei minor (Gundlach), is another widespread and common Cuban bat. I have often found it in the same caves with the fruit bat; but inhabiting darker and deeper recesses, it is much less inclined to fly out into the open. Gundlach remarks that it is frequently to be seen in clusters hanging in old warehouses, but in my experience it is limited to caves.

This species is quite definitely dichromatic, some individuals being seal brown while others are rustcolored. This is one of the great number of species which are seldom seen flying abroad. It does not fly into houses as some species occasionally do, nor have I ever seen it hawking insects about lights. It is perhaps the most abundant of the really dark-loving species.

Our collection shows that this species is found from one end of the island to the other, for we have series from La Cueva del Hoyo Valteso in the valley of Luis Lazo, from Pinar del Rio in the west, and from caves near Raracoa and Santiago de Cuba in the east.

3

MY WIFE and I were dining one evening with Elliott Bacon and Professor and Mrs. Bremer. We happened to be the only guests in the spacious dining hall of the old Delicias del Copey Hotel at Madruga in 1912. into the room flew a large bat which I realized at once was nothing that I had ever seen before. We chivvied and chased it about until at last we made it fly into a small bedroom. This we closed up, and we finally caught the animal and preserved it in alcohol.

I never saw this species — Eumops glaucinus (Wagner)— again until I caught one at North Miami, l’lorida, in 1936. This constituted the only North American record for the species until another Eumops was found in 1943 — dead and dried up — in an outbuilding on the estate of Mr. John B. Semple at Coconut Grove, Florida.

I now believe this bat may be established in southern Florida. My young friend James Loomis volunteered to serve as an airplane spotter and was stationed on the top of the high tower of the Miami-Biltmore in Coral Gables. He noted time and again that a number of rather large black bats emerged late each evening from a recess high in the cupola at the tiptop of the building. It is not improbable that this animal flies only in complete darkness and that it hunts high in the air. It may be, and indeed probably is, established in Florida a nd may have been so for some time, but has been unobserved because of its peculiar habits. I have always considered the Miami area in Florida to be without a bat population for some peculiar reason. Certainly neither I nor any of my friends have ever seen bats in the evening.

Miller records a single specimen taken under a tile roof by William Palmer at Pinar del Rio on February 27, 1900. Apparently nowhere common, this bat has a wide distribution. The type came from Cuyaba in Matto Grosso, Brazil, and it has been found in Bolivia and Jamaica. Curiously enough, I have never taken a specimen among the many hundreds of bats I have collected from time to time in Panama.

Poey’s bat, Phyllonycteris poeyi (Gundlach), another little bat characteristic of hot, damp, ill-ventilated caverns, is never under any circumstances seen or captured except in a cave where a colony dwells. The colonies are large and distribution is widespread. We have specimens from a cave in Almendares near Habana, from localities in central Cuba, and from caves near Banes and Baracoa.

I recall one cave which went directly downward, having a chimney-like entrance, and which was so deep that we had no way of reaching the bottom. Here two Cuban boas, six or seven feet long, lived on ledges five or six feet down in the entrance of the cave. The country people said that they snapped out at the ascending column of bats and nipped up individuals; provided with an abundance of food, they stayed for long periods without moving from their point of vantage.

I have often seen Poey’s bat with pollen grains dusted about its head and shoulders. Whether it visits flowers to eat the pollen, or visits flowering trees looking for insects which are attracted to the flowers, I do not know, but my botanist friend, Professor E. D. Merrill, tells me that recent investigations in the East Indies have shown that bats play a very considerable part in flower fertilization.

The fishing bat, Noptillio leporhinus mastivus (Dahl), is widely distributed. It was originally described from the island of St. Croix, and ranges widely on the coasts of Mexico. The Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard has specimens from the islands of Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Puerto Rico. It has also been reported from St. Thomas, Mona, Antigua, and Guadeloupe. Gundlach considered it a rare species in Cuba, and I know of no Cuban specimens except our two.

Both of our bats came from the vicinity of Lake Ariguanabo, where I have seen what I am certain was this species on a number of occasions during bright moonlight. I have seen it dip, and the ripple marks where it touched the water were plainly to be observed, but I have never been able to determine the exact details of its fishing methods. The long and welldeveloped claws on the hind feet and the extent of pouch-like interfemoral membrane suggest that it may carry fish off and devour them after it has returned to its resting place. I have never found one of its lairs in Cuba, but it is reported that they smell fishy.

I remember once the consternation caused by one of these giants — they have a wingspread of a foot or more. It had blundered into the well-screened dining room of the Tivoli Hotel at Ancon in the Canal Zone. This is truly a formidable bat with jaws capable of inflicting a considerable wound. I know because I knocked the beast down and then grabbed it with my napkin, which did not afford sufficient protection.

I have heard that large numbers of these bats have been found in the recesses of rocky cliffs facing the ocean on the Pacific coast of Panama, but I have never had the good fortune to find one there. My friend Austin Clark has also told me that in the southern Lesser Antilles, where he was collecting in 1903, this bat retires by day to narrow clefts in the rocks and that its presence in such places may be detected by a peculiar odor.

4

THE butterfly bat, Nyctiellus lepidus (Gervais), is one of the tiniest and most beautiful little bats that I know of in any part of the world. It flies about more like a butterfly than a bat, usually rather near the ground, winding in and out among bushes along porches, and turning up unexpectedly in all sorts of places. We know that it inhabits caves. The Museum at Cambridge has fourteen specimens from a cave near Habana. I found it first under amusing circumstances.

On our visit to Cape Cruz in 1913, don Carlos de la Torre and I hung our hammocks in a big bare room, the lower story of the lighthouse tower. We had trouble getting settled inasmuch as we landed at the Cape late at night and the keepers suspected we were bandits. Don Carlos’s silvery tongue soon settled this situation, however, and we began to enjoy life. Lighthouse keepers in the Spanish tropics usually are natives of the Balearic Islands. I have found them to be fine, upstanding people, and good companions. It was certainly true in this case.

We dined in an open stone and stucco structure, built on the rock right by t he water’s edge and near the lighthouse. One of the keepers could stand on a projecting crag beside the house and, throwing his casting net far and skillfully, catch in no time a bucket of shining, silvery sardines. Passed directly to the kitchen, these were soon ready for the table, fried whole in aceite Catalán. This Catalonian oil tempts some palates, while others consider it extremely offensive.

We were sitting down one evening with several of the faroleros and their womenfolk to dispose of a sumptuous platter of fried sardines, garnished with tomatoes and onions, when suddenly don Carlos exclaimed at seeing the t iniest snip of a bat. It was flying around and around the table. The windows were open but the little fellow seemed to make no effort to get out. Suddenly he disappeared. Walking around the table, I saw what looked like a yellow cockleburr on the shoulder of one of our hosts and I snatched up the tiny bat. It was the first time I had ever seen the species, and at that time it was a very rare find; we admired at length its queer, long, slender, sprawling legs and the delicate, soft fur before we put it away for the Museum.

Some years afterwards another one of these little gems flew into the room where I was lodging at Nueva Gerona in the Isle of Pines. So far as I know, this is the only record for that island. Had it not been for the fact that the naturalists of the Poey Museum at the University of Habana have discovered near the city a cave which has been most prolific in the production of rare and unusual bats, I should have thought that this was a solitary species — one of those that spend the day in the curled-up frond of a palm or in a dry banana leaf, as so many do on the mainland of Central America. The discovery of the colony in this cavern near Jaimanitas has settled the matter, and this is certainly a cave bat, though as yet we know nothing of its habits. One of the little specimens which I have in alcohol, when blotted so that its weight in life may be approximated, weighs no more than a small fraction of an ounce.

This world is full of surprises. If I should tell you out of a clear sky that bats have made an extremely valuable contribution to our war effort here in America, you would probably begin to tap your forehead, or curl your forefinger in front of your right eye, or make whatever little sign you have inherited from your family to signify insanity. It is a fact, but until the experiments of Donald Griffith, Robert Galambos, and their associates, no one suspected the truth.

It has long been known that when bats are turned loose in a room where wires have been strung about in all directions, and are allowed to fly freely, they touch none of the obstacles, even when their eyes are covered with court plaster. It has always been supposed that the back-up pressure as they approach obstacles is registered by the strange series of sensitive fimbriations and foliations of delicate membrane to be found about their faces. But the truth is even stranger than this supposition. It now has been shown that in flight the bats keep up a constant supersonic chittering outside of the range of human audition and that this chittering is reflected and registered by the sensitive membranes about the bat’s face.

In other words, the bat is a miniature, individual radar installation which has provided many a valuable hint to the geniuses who have been working on supersonic direction and perception during the last year or two. This is a clear illustration that no one can ever tell where the study of natural phenomena, however improbable it may appear from a utilitarian point of view, may end.