Batman Spotted in Elko!

On Thursday, January 29^th Nevada Outdoor School teamed up with Fun Factory in Elko to do an after school lesson on Nevada’s flying mammals. Students learned about the 8 most abundant bat species found in northern Nevada and what habitats they can be found in. Through an interactive identity game, students matched the species to their habitat and were able to explore photos of the different species to see the differences between them. The students then moved on to a trivia/research station where they were able to scour books for cool facts and new information on bats, and then put that knowledge to use in a trivia game. In addition to their research and the game, students were able to look at two bat specimens in jars to see what bats up close. Afterwards, the next stop was at a station exploring challenges that bats and people face when they find themselves in the same areas. We explored different things such as bat poisoning from the use of pesticides, loss of habitats due to de-forestation and cave disruptions, and talked most extensively about White Nose Syndrome (WNS), a fungal infection that disrupts the hibernation process for bats and is decreasing bat numbers rapidly. To understand WNS and how serious it is, students became hibernating bats to see the effects of WNS. The next station, students were able to step inside the world of bats by entering a large scale bat house. We discussed the benefits of bat houses and explored pictures of how bats sleep in bat houses and were able to explore a real bat house already assembled. The last stop on the bat journey was a game that explored an adaptation that bats use to assist their navigation and capture of prey, a process called echolocation. The students once again became bats, and one by one were blindfolded and had to clap to navigate a maze of other students that would clap in response to let the bat (student) know where obstacles were.

Blindfolded student faces Batman and tries
to use echolocation to catch his prey.

The objective for this lesson was for students to have fun and to learn in a relaxed environment. A lot of bat species are declining in numbers and knowledge on bats is largely missing. For the students that attended this lesson, they were able to become more familiar with the problems that are currently being faced by bats and people and are now more familiar with the bats that can be found in their backyards.


-Treebeard