h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bats eat mosquitoes. Bats are our friends. Build bat houses and give the bats a home.

I completely agree that everyone should build bat houses. But as I stated in the article they do not consume significant quanitities of mosquitoes to make a dent in the mosquito population. On the plus side, since they do not subsist on mosquitoes primarily, we can kill as many mosquitoes as we like and probably have little effect on the bat population! I was suprised when I researched this article to find out that the bats weren't controlling mosquito numbers, but I'm still a big fan 'cause I think they're CUTE.


Count Zero

Rats, now I can't use the mosquito thing to convince people to put up bat houses (most people don't think they're cute, unfortunately).

There were bats living in the attic of the building where I used to work and every once in a while one would find its way downstairs and scare the living daylights out of everyone. It was the highlight of the day.

If you want to you can still say that they should put up bat houses and that bats eat mosquitoes, they do. While they may not control the populations they may still be responsible for eating that one carrying some nasty disease and thereby keep it from biting you!


Count Zero

hmmm... has anybody written any articles about bats? especially the bit about them being the real inventors of radar?


count zero, you know what i'm hinting at...

I bet you meant to say Sonar. The thought of flying creatures able to emit microwave radiation scares me a bit.

Don't say that too loudly - someone's bound to think it's a good idea (I see military applications here).

Excellent article, though (should have said that earlier). And I second the hint about an entry on bats.

There's bound to be someone around here that knows alot more than I do about bats.

Count Zero

re: sonar