Raising the Profile of Bats at Halloween

This Halloween, the BATMAN team spread the word about how important bats are to our ecosystems! On Sunday 29th October, team members Lucy Morison and Chrissy Stanley joined a public engagement event, held at Cholmondeley Castle Gardens’ Autumn Festival and organised by the University of Chester’s Dept of Biological Sciences. Our aim was to raise the profile of bats and to share the objectives of the BATMAN project. We used a poster to illustrate our various avenues of research and demonstrated some of the equipment used during bat surveys, such as bat detectors. We had many great conversations about native bat species and how to study them. Lucy also made an excellent handout showing people how to make a bat box and insect hotel (providing valuable food for bats!), which was full of fun facts. Some of our favourites were that bats are the only mammals that can fly and they can achieve speeds of over 100kph. That makes them amongst the fastest living mammals! Adults and children alike asked some excellent probing questions about bats and their place in our ecosystem and many had their own stories to share about their encounters with bats. We look forward to future events where we can promote the profile of bats and change some perceptions, such as that bats are a pest species; in fact, we rely on them for a range of services, and without them, tequila production could be in danger!