On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:38:56 -0400, "Chas Hurst"
wrote:


"Yard Guy" wrote in message ...
Chas Hurst wrote:

In other words, while I can believe that bats can detect, and eat
a lot of flying insects (moths, etc) I simply don't believe that
mosquitoes form any significant portion of their diet.

That's just plain ignorance. Bats eat lots of mosquitoes, and it
doesn't matter what portion of the bats diet mosquitoes make.

A bat that eats one mosquito per night would not it a good reason to try
to attract bats to my back yard.

And you didn't respond to my comment that I question if a mosquito is
large enough to be detectible to the echo-location mechanism that bats
use to locate and consume their flying food items at night.

"A single bat can swallow 600 to 1,000 mosquitoes an hour, depending on the
bat species. An individual bat feeds for an hour or so at dusk and retreats
to its home site to rest. A second feeding may take place near dawn. With
about 100 small brown bats in a typical single colony, a lot of mosquitoes
can disappear in a single night. "



http://news.ufl.edu/2004/10/27/bats-n-skeeters/

Moron.

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/proprom.htm

"Insectivorous Bats

Every so often, a well-meaning conservation group promotes bats to
eliminate mosquitoes from areas where nuisance has become intolerable.
This undoubtedly leads to rediscovery of research conducted in the
1950s indicating that bats released in a room filled with mosquitoes
could catch up to 10 mosquitoes per minute. The research was conducted
to measure the effectiveness of echolocation in insectivorous bat
species. The results have been extrapolated to suggest that wild bats
can consume 600 mosquitoes per hour. Using that figure, a colony of
500 bats will remove 250,000 mosquitoes each hour and theoretically
afford mosquito control for an entire neighborhood. Research since
that time has shown that insectivorous bats are opportunistic feeders
and that mosquitoes make up a very small percentage of their natural
diet. Bats' behavior when locked in a room with nothing to feed upon
but mosquitoes has no bearing on their behavior in the wild. Bats feed
on the same insects that turn up in bug zappers and are no more
effective for controlling mosquitoes than their electronic equivalent.
Providing habitat to enhance bat populations is an admirable activity
for conservation purposes. Using mosquito control as the reason to
initiate public interest is misleading at best."