Bat Education

Myths and rumors are a huge factor in bats’ bad reputation. All of these rumors and myths that people hear all the time scare them and cause them to think that bats are horrible creatures, when in fact bats are very helpful and useful in the world today. They are very efficient in natural pest control and play a vital role in our ecosystem. By reducing the amount of given insects in an area they save us from having to use thousands of tons of chemicals that would have to be used if they were not there to help control the pest populations.

I decided to promote bats publicly to the community as well as to students in K-12 grades so that I could help or start to change the public’s view on bats. I created a brochure, a website to help promote bats, and an activity book which was about eleven pages long. The activity book was also a coloring book and included three coloring pages and eight activities including: connect the dots, a maze, unscramble the word and crossword puzzles.

Another component of my project was to build bat boxes to help attract bats to certain areas. When constructing the bat boxes I decided to try and test out different theories on what bats like to live in. I am currently making ten bat boxes with different designs and using different types of wood. When they are put up at a later date I will check the boxes every three months for signs of the bats such as feces and other indicative signs.