ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 19, 1996 TAG: 9610210105
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
Put away your bugzappers! Kill insects silently while you sleep!
Hang a bat house in a nearby tree, and its residents will dispose of lots of insects in your yard and garden, without that awful zzztt of frying flying objects.
Afraid that if you welcome bats into your neighborhood, they'll terrorize your children and tangle themselves in your hair?
Nonsense! Bats are shy, gentle animals and are mainly interested in getting a good meal at nature's all-night diners.
There's a creature feature, ``Masters of the Night: The True Story of Bats,'' open through Jan. 5 at the Science Museum of Western Virginia in Roanoke's Center in the Square that can allay some of your fears about these tiny fliers and is bound to give you a healthy respect for them.
Everything about bats is efficient and purposeful - from their breast stroke-like wing movements to their facial characteristics, unfortunate though they may seem to us.
As you step through the exhibit's castle-like entrance, cartoon-style panels dispel common myths about bats. They will not mess with your hair; they're really interested in the bugs that might be flying over your head.
And there's no such thing as ``blind as a bat.'' At night, most bats see better than humans.
Bats are not flying mice. When you see the life-size bat skeleton on display, you'll notice it's surprisingly like yours. No, we don't have elongated arms (Michael Jordan notwithstanding), hand or finger bones connected by a thin membrane (bats' scientific name means ``hand-wings''), but otherwise the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone and so on.
Several much-larger-than-life models of bat heads let you be as up close as you'd like to be. They lend themselves to being touched and include Braille labels. The long noses of nectar-eating bats work efficiently as the bats stick their entire heads deeply into flowers to collect nectar, transporting pollen that sticks to their heads as they exit the flowers and move on.
The huge ears of insect-eating bats are used for echolocation (sonar) - the bats send out pulses of sound and listen to the echoes to locate their prey. In one second, the sounds, created through their mouths or nostrils, travel more than 1,000 feet.
Bats' strange noses and facial features help in focusing, directing or receiving the ultrasonic pulses. You'll never hear the bat sounds; they're beyond our range. If you could hear them, though, the sound would be as intense as a smoke alarm.
To get an idea of how echolocation works, there are two cave shafts of different sizes at the new bat exhibit. Calling into them and listening for the echo to return gives you an idea of how long it takes for the sound to bounce off a surface and return to you. It's sort of a kindergarten version of the Ph.D. method bats use.
A world map with lights identifying the habitats of bats will set your mind at ease. There are no vampire bats within hundreds of miles of here. They don't attack humans, anyway. Another myth dispelled.
Several interactive CD-ROMS show acroBATics as a bat twirls upside down, twisting fruit off a branch; or watch a bat's wing movements in slow motion as it zeroes in on an insect.
If you've wondered where bats hang out, there's a display of some of their favorite resting places - under bridges or eaves of houses, in the hollows of trees, cracks in rocks and, of course, in caves. And if you have a belfry, chances are it's got bats in it, too.
One item you won't find in the exhibit is a live bat. Their environmental needs are so delicate, it would be difficult to provide adequately for them. On most Saturdays, Mill Mountain Zoo will present a live bat program at the museum. Call 342-5710 for a schedule.
When you leave the exhibit, chances are you'll feel at least a little less creepy about bats.
And they might not seem quite as ugly as before.
If you're serious about studying bats, call Bat Conservation International at 1-800-538- BATS or check out their home page at http://www.batcon.org/index.html.
* ``Masters of the Night: The True Story of Bats'' is on display at the Science Museum of Western Virginia through Jan. 5. The museum is open Monday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for senior citizens and $3 for ages 3-12. For more information, call 342-5710.
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART\Staff. 1. Judd Carte (above), of Glen Coveby CNBElementary School in Roanoke County, listens to room noise with the
aid of bat-like ears on display at the Science Museum in Center in
the Square. 2. A Fisherman bat (below) snags a fish in a photo
display. color.