Be amazed at the 'Going Batty' activity that took place on Nov 3 and Nov 10, 2018 at the Penang Botanic Gardens. This activity was conducted by our RIE Award reciepient, Ms. Nur Izzati Abdullah, the post graduate Researcher in Animal Zoology. Her speciality is Bats.
We had 14 participants attend the talk on Nov 10th at the Botanika Outreach, with some of them comprising her team of USM student research interns. She begun with a presentation on Bat Morphology and Classification of the two main types of bats in Malaysia. These were Fruit eating and Insect eating bats. Malaysia has 10% of the world bat species, which number 1300 species.A quarter of these are listed as ICUN vulnerable. Approximately, 14 species can been found at The Botanic Gardens.
She further explained that bat roosting sites may be in Natural structures (Caves, under trees, bamboo groves) or in Man-Made structures ( under eaves, in attics or bridges) They normally roost in groups that can number 100-150 per cluster. Bats usually have different types of roosting areas for sleeping, foraging, and also maternity roosts.
How bats feed;
For Frugivorous bats, they feed on nectar and ripe fruit and are important in seed dispersal and pollination. They are crucial in spreading seeds for certain species of plants like the Petai. Also, they aid in Durian tree pollination. Fruit bats have large eyes and long snouts.
For Insectivorous bats, they feed on insects and bugs. They help reduce the insect pest population like mosquitoes and winged termites. Insect eating bats have large ears and a ugly snub snouts. The large ears are used for echo-location of insects in flight using ultra-sound.
A Bat trapping we will go!!!
In order to do research on bats, Ms. Izzati and her team, has to set up traps along the bat fly-ways in the Gardens. We joined her to see how this was done. There are 2 different kind of traps to catch bats:
A 'Harp trap' is used to catch Insectivorous bats, which comprises of a rectangular frame, with transparent nylon strings arranged in staggered vertical rows. The echo-locating insectivorous bats cannot sense the strings and fly into the barrier and drop into a collection bag below.
To catch Frugivorous bats the usual 'Mist net' is set between poles. A mist net is very much like a fishing net, but with small mesh size.These are set up near fruit trees that the bats feed on. In our case near a grove of Banana trees.
These traps are normally set up at Dusk, around 6~7pm and specimens collected till 10pm the same night.
The researcher's collect the specimens caught; and each bat is weighed, sexed, measured, and any stool sample collected or pollen dusted off, for identification purposes. For echo-locating insectivorous bats, a "bat detector" is used to measure their call frequency. They are photographed and also compared with a Bat ID chart to classify them. Once all this is done, they will be released back into the wild.
At 10pm a wary team wrapped up and disassembled all the traps before retiring for the day.
