A small transmitter about the size of a pencil eraser and the weight of a paper clip is glued to the bat s fur. The transmitter falls off after a few weeks. After being released, the signal from the bat s transmitter can be followed to find its foraging and roosting sites. About a dozen bats have been fitted with transmitters as part of the project. MacDonald s overall goal is to find the bats hibernacula a place where entire colonies hibernate over the winter usually situated in a different location than their summer roosting site.
Bats get a bad rap, but they re actually very beneficial to people.
For example, one bat can eat up to 600 mosquitoes in an hour, MacDonald said. They use high-frequency echolocation to find their prey. Interestingly, a bat in western Washington might use a different frequency than his cousin of the same species in eastern Washington or British Columbia. Bats are definitely getting more recognition now than they were a few years ago, but still very little is known about them, he said. Insecticide contamination may be a reason why some bats are rarely seen in western Wash-ington and why populations of other bats seem to be declining.