Show FX F 4 A J g D 11 MIA 19 des 4 0 0 11 k A 0 N 1 ill I 1 vill A 2 Z by ROBERT H MOULTON HAT man may owe his existence today to the one lone mammal that can fly the bat sounds rather far fetched let according to scientists this Is quite possible because it must be remembered that the bat probably evolved prior to all other mammals and t was his province to reduce in the air the dominant swarming insect tribes which in those early times time s easily owned the earth after nine million bears ears of continuous breeding on a vast scale his associate in the good work of insect destrie tion evolving not long after him was the ant eater the function of the latter was to clear the ground of a class of insects as deadly as those which had wings first birds were not insect eaters they were ere and probably fed on the tat fat insect eating bats preventing them in turn from becoming too dominant thus all nature alecks cl ecks growth of too dominant animals and plants and makes for an average of species nor will man permit any particular race or nation of men to become too dominant hence there have been wars between men somewhere on eaith if not over most of it ever eer since primitive man was ev evolved oled the bats have strange habits of living thou sands of them mass together in cares eaves and attics or fill up a hollow bollow tree to its capacity it Is doubtful if bats could perform their whole province in nature that of vast insect extermination it if their life were not conducted in a manner productive of immense progeny gray divided the bats into two clashes those which from the beginning have lived upon in sects and those which descended from them the fruit eaters of the latter the largest species extant Is the so called alving in fox of malay which has a spread of wings of five feet or more of the former class or rather out of it Is the south american vampire bat which lives mies only on blood and which when uben confronted with a choice as between a mule and the man on its back lights on the mule and sucks its blood until dispossessed in africa aher there are large herds of game tl ere are no vampire bats in the tie hl region where there are numbers of fruits there are no fruit eating b bits its the fruit eaters command attention by their great flights continuing for weeks neels across the african country it Is within their powers of flight to travel across the country between five degrees borth and five degi degiers ees south of the equator since traN travelers elers note the occurrence of se several eral species tl 11 hout this range migration Is the only pos bible eible solution otherwise they would starve to death if they remained in one region continuously the digestion 0 of fruit tats Is so rapid that thea the must travel far and often to keep supplied with food three species only of bats are known to be common all over north america the silver haired the and the red bat each species Is migratory and they are e eisley able to cross ocean barriers because of the plain fact that they ha have hae e often done so it Is not generally realized tl ti at bats possess ers of flight superior to those of many birds this may be b inferred from the fact act that a red bat hab has been known to catch flies in the air while burdened with mth young that together weighed more than she did most call fornia bats catch and devour their prey on the wing biting off and rejecting the hard parts of the insects bats are as valuable to humans as insectivorous birds they are especially important in keepin keeping in check nocturnal insects particularly disease carriers dr A 0 campbell of san antonio texas found that 90 per cent of the food of bats in that vicinity ity cons sted of malarial carrier mos he advocated erecting roosts in all parts of the country where mosquitoes are pestiferous 11 i ti 1 1 1 TI azez BA san anton 0 responded by erecting a roost and protecting bats by law now tl 11 at the san antonio municipal bat roost has proved its success it Is dr campbells idea to have this natural hygienic measure adopted by governments municipalities or corporations con trolling large bodies of land in malarial regions and are financially able to erect enough of the roosts to protect their tenants the reason Is obvious it Is the masses the poorer classes the wage eigners who are the ones to be benefited as it Is tt ey who are principally the carriers ot of the diseases they know nothing about the dangers of these insects or the use of screens the bureau of entomology ai at washington has conservatively estimated the tribute tits tl Is nation pays to malaria at early dearly this proposition Is in a class all by itself because of the economic feature which Is inseparable from the hygienic the bat catches and eats the most ma le of insects the malaria mosquito and then as if to punish it for its malignity converts the insoluble parts of its little body into the highest of all fertilizers guano it has been demonstrated that a single bat will consume mosquitoes every t and the weight of one bat bats s droppings in a single day amounts to 2 3 5 emins the bat roost at san antonio will house of these creatures and in the vicinity ity of sin antonio tl ey are active about nine months in the year when it Is con I dered that guano Is worth about 50 a ton the commercial comme iclal value of the amount which may be collected from one of these roosts in a single year is easily estimated A peculiarity of bat behavior which has baffled the scientists of some generations past has been the ability of the creature to 9 vold objects it cannot see how for example can a bat flying at top speed in a room know that there Is a fine silk thread ahead of him and turn in time to avoid anold it experiments conducted recently by I 1 profess r hamilton hartridge artridge II of cambridge eng land have hane thrown considerable 1191 t upon this subject the bat according to professor hartridge emits tiny waves too high to be audible to human ears these sound waves wanes send back an echo from all solid objects nearby tle tl e bats bat s wings are a mass of nerves parts of its face including the ears nose and cl in are covered with fine tive hairs making it the most sensitive thing in animated nature professor hartridge discovered tl it at the short wave length sounds given forth by the feving bats while near the audible limit ot of man are really above abode the limit OA 0 moat mot people the bats while abnormally sensitive to such sounds have hane little or no capacity to hear louder sounds experiments have shown that bats were not disturbed when nhen persons spoke loudly to them but they were greatly disturbed when paper was aas torn the tearing of paper caused the bats to slacken their speed and flutter bats move thir th ir wings very nery rapidly they make 9 U zw ay about ten or gr twelve strokes in a second this produces an extremely high ante which striking all surrounding objects becomes mod fled tied by their character and size and is reflected back these reflections are received by the so called organs of the sixth sense the ea e eg of all insect eating bats are d m and weak and they apparently depend entirely upon the sensitiveness of their facea faces and wings hi in finding their way about professor hartridge blindfolded a number and released them in a room which was crossed with many wires and partitioned from another room by a grid con tattling holes fast ast lare large enough for tl ti e bats to fly through the flying mammals never ed a wire and flew through the holes with ith ease in many cases the organ that gives the bat the sixth ense sense is aspre spread id over oer a lare large pirt part of its face fate in the ampire bat the organ is on the tip of the nose it stands up in the air and Is called the shield but in most of he the small bats that catch insects on the wing we ne find two little leaves not unlike the wings of the insect that hat it pursues standing up just in front of the ears it should be noted tl it at all bats endowed with the sixth sense are very small an 1 consequently move their aln wings s vera ver rapidly while ti tie e large bats with slowly moving wings which live exclusively on fruit never I 1 lave ae the sixth sense and always have large eyes an example of tl e latter Is the balong a bit with a body about fourteen inci eg es long and a wing spread of four beet or more it does not inhabit ca caves caes es but makes its home among the thick foliage or trees following the sinking of the steamship titi nic as the result of striking striling an iceberg some me years ago sir hiram maxim the noted I 1 english inventor taking his cue from the sixth sense of tl if e bat pro posed an apparatus for sl 81 fps that would bend send out vibrations and record the ech es caused by them if they struck against any hard object an iceberg tor for example it was his idea that the infinitesimal amount of energy employed by the bat sl be increased to two or attree tl ree hundred horse borse pow er that Is waves bilth w ath an amplitude and energy at least times tl it it of tl it e bat should be sent out these vibrations vibration I 1 e explained alt although bough f great energy would n t be audible to human huma n ears but boull travel at least twenty miles so thu thit th it u they could be received and recorded by a suitable apparatus at abat th tt ce and would be able to tra travel el at least five n lies ties and send back bal to tie tl e ship a reflected echo from another ship or an ice ie be bei fe ta atiat at would be strong enough to be detected such an echo properly recel received ved and recorded would he declared not only indicate size an shape with a fair degree of accuracy but aliel tion and d stance with great accuracy more recently aeronautical experts also tal ing cognizance of the sixth sense of tl e bat have been experimenting along the same lines with a view to devising instruments which record foi airmen sounds as they approached objects object anil and thus safeguard them against collisions |