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Echoes in the Dark: Inside the Lives of Bats 01-19-2026
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Rachann talks with Shaun Dunn, zoologist with the Nebraska Game and Park Commission, Wildlife Division, Natural Heritage Program. Shaun takes us into the hidden world of bats: how these remarkable creatures live, from their insect‑rich diet, to the ways guano tells much about their diet and health. They explore the mystery behind echolocation and decode the meaning of bat calls, using them to identify different species.
Nebraska Game & Parks Commission | Explore Nebraska Today
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Audio file
RCP Podcast Bats Total Release Date 01-19-2026.mp3
Transcript
I've actually been interested in bats since I was a kid.
most people are just kind of scared of them in general.
And so I think it prevents people from learning about them.
But yeah, they absolutely are this truly unique sweet species.
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Sean Dunn, zoologist from Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
Could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do out there in Nebraska?
Yeah, I'm in the wildlife division
the Nebraska Game Parks Commission, as you mentioned.
And I'm actually in what's called the Natural Heritage Program.
voles, mice, things like that.
That seems like a lot of little things that are really important.
I do a lot of different things throughout the day.
Are those sorts of interactions things that you track there in Nebraska?
So we have, whether it's a native species or an exotic one that is
is introduced from another country, another continent.
And you're right, sometimes it's insects.
For instance, right now, you know, we've got several exotic insects moving their way across the U.S.
Emerald ash borer is one of them.
Spotted lanternfly is another one.
But we also have things like white-nose syndrome, which is a fungus that
And that is moving across the U.S.
It's pretty much almost in every state now.
And it has a very detrimental effect on our bat populations.
Is that how you became interested in studying bats, was through the white-nose fungus?
I think that's probably one of the most recent things that we focused a lot of attention on.
But I've actually been interested in bats since I was a kid.
You know, I heard a lot about bats.
And during my education in undergrad and grad school, I got a chance to work with bats.
Help me ground myself, if you will, for a moment.
Bats are mammals, they're not birds.
As mammals, they have fur, they produce milk for their young, they have live birth.
So all the things we think of with
mammals, bats do those things.
Now, the only thing that separates bats from all the other mammals is that bats can fly.
So they are the only mammal capable of true powered flight.
So bats are in the order Chiroptera, which basically means hand wing.
And the other thing that's really interesting about bats, one of the adaptations,
is everything about them is very lightweight.
And that's how they're able to get enough power to get up and fly.
So most of the bats here in North America are fairly small.
They weigh between maybe 10 and 20 grams, which is like maybe 15 grams would be like 3 nickels.
That's a great way to think about it.
Three nickels of weight for a bat.
You talked about the hand structure and the bat wing.
They're also, are they nails or are they
What is the name of the protrusion on the end of that wing?
Yeah, we typically just call it the claw there.
And that would be kind of their thumbnail.
If you were looking at it as an analog of a human hand, that would kind of be where their thumb is.
And they use that to help when they're on a tree or a wall or something.
Coming back from those bat wings,
In Wizard of Oz and the associated movies, the monkeys have wings.
Or are they out of a different area of their body?
The shoulder is basically where they come out of.
And again, their wing is very analogous to our arm.
And so it comes out of their upper portion of their shoulder, just like it would on a human.
They're just much, much shorter.
So then I'm going to jump to the next
assumption, and you can tell me if I've gotten this one right or wrong.
It feels almost like trivial pursuit with bats this morning.
If the wing membrane is damaged, I'm assuming that impacts their flight.
So a lot of times we can actually hold the wing up to the light and see through it.
those are too large and can't be repaired.
But for the most part, yeah, they will regenerate.
When we started this piece, I needed to ask some questions to ground me.
And so here comes my other one.
And we were often warned about their feces if you were going spelunking in a cave to be
And the word that was commonly used with that was guano.
But I associate that term with avians or birds.
No, guano is the preferred term that we use for their feces.
And so it's actually a really interesting part of the bat.
And in bats, it's no different.
So their guano can hold a lot of key features for us.
So yeah, guano is the proper name.
And depending on the study we're doing, it's actually really important to us.
It's also a good fertilizer for the soil.
So they are mammals, but there are some bird characteristics, but not really.
Yeah, it's an interesting way to put it.
So birds and bats, while they do the same thing of flight, they're very, very different.
They have different adaptations that allow them to fly.
They have feathers to help them catch the air and keep them aloft.
Bats have gone a different route.
So bats have teeth, but they're very, very tiny.
Bats don't necessarily have hollow bones, but their bones are extremely small, very, very thin.
If you have a bat skull, you can actually see into the brain case because the bone is so thin.
Now, the other thing that's different, birds
have developed a huge muscular structure on their keel.
So those are their flight muscles that they're able to use to take off and fly.
So they're hanging on something and they almost glide off.
So they fall, catch the air, I would assume, and go.
Yeah, so a lot of times people will call us and say, oh, I found a bat on the ground.
the time, it's because they can't take off from the ground on their own.
We were doing renovations in our older home.
It was built in 1772, and we ended up having a few bats come in as visitors.
And we found them on brick walls behind us.
Yes, it was a great, they were latched on, they were very happy.
And we corralled them into a pizza box and let them go outside.
tosses that up into the air and the bat launched right out of it.
And I ask him why he did that.
And he goes, I don't know, but it just needed it.
Well, you know, actually that probably worked just fine for the bat.
He could put out his wings, grab some air and take off.
I've gone through some of my items that needed grounding, some things I wasn't quite sure of.
What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you hear about?
Oh, man, we get several and I get a lot of phone calls of people, you know,
And the first thing I say is, well, they do come out during the day sometimes.
And while all the bats in North America use echolocation as
largely their primary way to see things.
They do have eyes and their eyes function quite well.
So they can both see and they use echolocation to find their way around.
When you say echolocation, I think sonar or radar.
A lot of them are higher than what humans can hear.
a little bit if you're close to one, but a lot of the sounds they make are higher than we can hear.
And it's very, very effective.
They've done experiments where they've given bats
obstacles in complete darkness and then watched how they've flown around with night vision cameras.
They can sense very small items.
Welcome back to Raising Connections.
Where does that term come from?
I don't know where it originated from, but
I do hear it quite a bit that that's kind of a term for maybe going a little crazy.
And they're able to pinpoint insects while
they're flying and they're able to follow those insects.
a almost constant call out of the bat's mouth so that the returning sounds come back constantly.
And that allows them more feedback on where that insect is so they can catch it.
And so if the insect moves a little bit,
that they're able to pick up that movement through that feeding buzz and then capture the insect.
And as you get closer, the Geiger counter sounds more the closer you get to something as far away.
Is that coming from the new technology that's available?
Part of that is, so we know a lot about bats, and then there's a lot we don't know.
Part of that is because bats are so small, it's really hard to track them.
It's really hard to figure out where they're going.
Let's say, for instance, a deer or a coyote or something like that.
and see where that animal's moving.
At this point in time, we don't have the technology for something similar for bats.
So maybe a better way of describing that is one of the best ways we find
to track bats is with LED lights.
And so then when it takes off, it's got a little blinky light on it, and then you can follow that.
So if a bat weighs 3 nickels, and that's 15 grams, right?
to it, that's a 15th of its body weight.
Yep, and that's part of the issue.
of body mass when you're putting on any kind of contraption on an animal.
With bats, that's very, very difficult.
So to balance that, what we typically do is we'll glue it on the bat, but we use a temporary glue.
And so it won't last more than a couple of days.
And that way, even though it's a little bit heavier than we
So a little bit of what we would like, a little bit of what they would like.
And bats do have the ability to carry more weight.
They typically have their pups
in either twins or they'll have 4 pups at a time.
And I've actually seen a eastern red bat flying with four pups attached to her.
So they do have the ability to carry that extra weight for a short amount of time.
Going back to our beginning, bats are mammals.
They give birth to live young.
They're going to nurse their young under their wings.
Is that where a mother bat would be carrying?
their young as they're moving.
Yeah, so where they excrete their milk, the ******* are on the chest.
And so they typically will have the pups attached to the main body.
So not necessarily on the wings, but around the main body, basically what would be their chest.
And the pups will attach to there and nurse from the ******* on the chest.
And then if that female gets scared or a predator comes in the colony or something,
or something like that, she has the ability to take off and take those pups with her.
All right, I have to ask this because it just seems so counterintuitive to me.
I picture the bats hanging upside down sleeping or hanging upside down resting.
And we've learned today that that helps them launch and fly.
They have a fairly short digestive tract in relation to other mammals their size.
And so they digest their food very quickly, typically within, you know, an hour or two.
If it's a very large insect or, you know, large
It might take a little longer.
But the food moves through very quickly.
And even though they might be hanging upside down, the digestion process still works the same way.
use the same thing to digest their food.
But yeah, that muscle squeezes everything down, moves it into your stomach.
and then it does its normal digestion, even if you happen to be laying down or upside down.
So we have insectivores that eat insects,
And that's almost all of the bats in North America only eat insects.
We do have a few that eat fruit and nectar, and those are typically Mexican and very southern U.S.
So you'll find them in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, areas like that.
But the majority of the bats in North America are insectivores.
Then we have our, what we call frugivores, or they eat fruit.
And those are primarily the ones that are pollinating flowers.
So if you like tequila, that's made from the agave plant, and those are pollinated by bats.
And then I will mention the last group that a lot of people probably know about.
So what they call, I believe it's
Languivores, so bats that eat blood.
They do occur in Mexico and Central America, but humans are not their primary target.
They typically will feed from cattle, livestock, chickens, things like that.
And in that way, the bats are almost crossing over into an insect instead of a
Yeah, and they do it very differently.
For bats, what they do is vampire bats, they will, let's say it goes up to the foot of a chicken.
You know, it gets in a chicken roost, goes up to there.
What it'll do is they have very sharp
teeth, and it'll make a small slit in the leg of the chicken.
And then the blood will come out, and the bat will just kind of lick that up.
There's a whole research project run by the U.S.
Geological Service called the North American Bat Monitoring Program, or we call it NA-BAT for short.
Almost all the states are involved
and we put out acoustic monitors that listen for bat calls.
And then from there, we can analyze those calls and tell which species of bats are flying by.
When I first heard about this, I was like, wow, that's really interesting.
Now, it's difficult, but it's something you really have to train to do.
And I am by no means an expert in it.
They have searching calls when they're just kind of looking for something to eat.
They have almost like an alarm call when they're being chased by a predator.
We are going to keep our ears open and our eyes open in January.
Is this a time that we would typically see bats?
If you are down south in the U.S.
or in central South America, yes, you would there because it's warm enough for them.
But up here in the northern reaches, typically they are hibernating at this point in time.
And so they're away for the winter and we won't see them until March or April when the temperature
temperatures start warming up a little bit.
Sean Dunn, zoologist, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
I appreciate you being part of Raising Connections this morning.
If we want to learn more about what you do or bats in general, where do we find you?
Can find me at outdoorNebraska.gov.
And there are also some really great organizations.
Bat Conservation International, they are a wonderful group that works to conserve bats.
Their website has a lot of wonderful information on it.
I'm going to go get ready for the bat season.
So about March, I'm going to start watching the skies and seeing what I see at dusk and dawn.
That's perfect, especially when temperatures start getting up above 60.
That's when they start warming up.
and start coming out looking for insects.
I appreciate you being part of us today, and I appreciate all of our listeners.
Until next time, make some connections.
We'll make some more connections.