Smile for the Camera by Furryscaly, on Flickr
Ah the consummate bat. Big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) are the creatures that all cartoons and many movies represent when they need bats. As nocturnal animals, they spend their nights on the hunt and their days in pretty much any crevasse they can find, like caves, hollow trees or any convenient attic they happen to notice. They eat insects and find a place to hibernate through the winter, usually underground.
The coolest thing about the big brown bats is their reproduction. Pregnant females form maternity colonies of up 600 individual bats (this includes the babies, by the way) and the females raise the young together until they can fly on their own. For bats, it seems that it indeed does take a village.
Countertop Bat by Furryscaly, on Flickr
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