This program is so popular that the workshops always fill up. And the best part is that once or twice a year we receive phone calls from workshop participants telling us they now have bats in their bat houses. The class focuses on unique features of bats by using props such as a bat costume. As a volunteer student puts on the costume piece by piece, educators discuss the importance of bat attributes, such as wings for flight and noseleaf and ears for echolocation. Afterwards, the fifth-grade teachers are given bat house instructions so that they may continue bat education when they return to their own schools.
Some zoos are including bat lessons in broader educational programs.
While they were there, zoo education curator Norma Lewis gave a slide presentation on bats. Despite a busy and exciting weekend of marine activities such as seining, trolling, and dissecting a squid, a post-weekend survey demonstrated that the bat lecture was the most popular activity. In addition to new exhibits and increased education, zoos are also establishing conservation action programs for bats, both in captivity and in the wild. An SSP is a cooperative program for the preservation of an individual species that is considered threatened or endangered in the wild. While the primary responsibility is to manage the breeding of a species in order to maintain a healthy and self-sustaining captive population, SSPs tend to take on numerous additional conservation projects for the targeted species, including relevant research and field conservation initiatives.