#bat detector

[indagold-orchid]

Sodoku is in fact the cuddliest laughing rat!

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Bats in the attic prompt boys to create a better bat detector

When a teen learned he had 700 bats in his attic, he decided to develop a better bat detector.

PHOENIX, Ariz. — When Dylan Bagnall, 17, and his family first heard skittering sounds in the attic, they assumed their house had rats. But when the exterminator showed up, everyone was in for a surprise. Dylan’s family was hosting some 700 bats. What to do? Develop a science-fair project to identify their flying housemates — and to help others identify them, too.

Dylan is a junior at The King’s Hospital School in Dublin, Ireland. For help, he turned to fellow student and friend Richard Beattie, 17. “Richard, help me,” he said. “I’ve got 700 bats.”

If he hadn’t been interested before, Richard says, hearing “700 bats" gets you interested. The bats, which are protected in Ireland, had to stay. They cannot be evicted, disturbed or even handled without a license. They eat insects, of course. Bats also pollinate some plants. Ireland has nine bat species, but Dylan had no idea which species was living in his attic. The teens decided to find out.  

To start, Richard recalls, “We got a bat detector and went on bat walks with local bat groups.” Bat detectors have a microphone that takes in bat sounds. Those sounds are ultrasonic — too high pitched for a human to hear. So the device “translates” the sounds, playing them back at a frequency people can hear.

But the teens weren’t satisfied with their detector. They couldn’t save the calls they heard. They also couldn’t get a graph of the call — a pictured voiceprint of the call as it was detected. Having one might help identify the bats. Richard and Dylan also were shocked by how expensive bat-call detectors could be. They decided they needed to build a better voice trap for these bats.

Bat boys

They started with a Raspberry Pi computer and the microphone from a smartphone. Their new device takes in and plays back bat calls, of course. But that’s not all. “We can record the audio, not just listen to it,” Richard says. The system will “show graphs and play it in a form you can hear,” Richard says. And the new detector cost the guys only $137 to make — much less than the cost of standard bat detectors.

Since the teens developed the detector when the bats were hibernating in the winter, they also developed a computer program to act as their test bat. “It generates ultrasonic sounds,” Richard says. And their new detector picked up them all.

Richard Beattie (left) and Dylan Bagnall (right) show off their bat detector at Intel ISEF. CREDIT: C. Ayers Photography/SSP

It also helped the teens identify the bats in Dylan’s attic.

Some bats have very similar calls. Voice alone wasn’t going to be enough to distinguish between them. So the teens scooped up some bat poop, known as guano. (With 700 bats, that was easy.) They used it to develop a simple DNA test that could pinpoint which of the nine types of Irish bats were living in the attic.

Their investigation confirmed what an ecologist told them: The bats in Dylan’s attic did not all belong to one species. In fact, there were three: Lisler’s bats, common pipistrelles and soprano pipistrelles. “They can all live together because they don’t compete for food,” Dylan explains.

Notes Richard, “There’s lots of people with bat roosts. They may have bats and not know how to identify them,” he says. “We found there was no place for citizen scientists to share this information.” So the teens built a website called Bat Identification. Here, anyone can upload a bat call. Other bat enthusiasts can listen to them and help identify which species made them. In this way, Richard explains, “We can create an accurate map of Ireland’s bat populations to pinpoint where species are as they move.” That should “help conservationists target their efforts” so that they can protect more bats.

[indagold-orchid]

So when I kiss him, he emits 20 khz and 50khz squeaks at the same time which according to everything I looked up, he hates and loves it?

Mixed messages.

[indagold-orchid]

So my thoughts on the bat detector: Its pretty useful to see which rat likes tickles and cuddles the most. Had no idea sodoku liked being picked up and cuddled. He let me rub his belly more.

This is the one I got. It ships internationally. I think 50-70 is when you hear the giggles.

Magenta Bat 4 Bat Detector

Buy Magenta Bat 4 Bat Detector: NHBS

[keszegeteszeget]

Ma este naplementekor jöttem haza tornáról, és a kispark felett megláttam egy denevért. Aztán az utcánkban is, úgyhogy gyorsan előkaptam a gyerekek kiskorában összerakott, de még most is jól szuperáló denevérdetektort, és a nagy gyerekkel az emeliet ablaknál hallgattuk, ahogy ide-oda cikáz az egyik kis vadász. Egy nagyobb meg a szemben lévő blokk felett repkedett, de azt sajna nem tudta már befogni ez a kütyü. Azt csak néztük.

Augusztus amúgy is a denevér-néző hónap,ilyenkor már korábban sötétedik, de még viszonylag meleg van, még nem mennek téli álmot aludni.

[astralportalmultidimensional]

🦇👀

[lizzieviolet13]

Bat Adventures - Research and Science!

Bat Adventures – Research and Science!

This week in bat adventures… we didn’t actually make it out for any, well, bat adventures. However, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on bat researchers and wanted to share what I found! I also threw in some books you might find interesting. Famous bat researchers: If you are anything like me and my love of bats, you will also want to know about famous bat researchers. There are many out…

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[lizzieviolet13]

Bat Adventures Are Back!

Bat Adventures Are Back!

And we’re bat! {see what I did there?} That’s right! Batastic! We went on our first official Bat Adventure on Sunday, May 23rd, but due to the amount of fire works there wasn’t any action. My heart breaks for all animals when the fireworks go off. I’ve never liked fireworks and in my opinion they should be banned. 😦 As with every bat adventure blog post, I will be posting with the dates that we…

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