Burton Cave, Pike County, a protected habitat for the Indiana bat. i e Gardner 



The Bats of Illnois 



by James E. Gardner and David A. Saugey 



BATS Inhabit All of Earth's terrestrial regions, 

 except the polar areas and extreme desert. More 

 than 1,000 species are found worldwide, with 40 

 species in the continental United States and 12 in 

 Illinois. 



They are the most important predators of night- 

 flying insects. More than 70 percent of the world's hat 

 species are insectivorous, and most consume over half 

 their body weight in insects nightly. A single little 

 brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), a species common 

 throughout Illinois, can consume up to 900 insects in 

 an hour. 



A common misbelief is that bats attack humans. 

 Another popular miconception is that all bats are rabid 

 but don't suffer from the disease themselves, and there- 

 fore are important reservoirs of the disease among wild 

 animals. None of these beliefs, however, has any basis 

 in fact. Bats do not attack people even when provoked 

 (though some will bite in self-defense if picked up) and 



less than one half of one percent of all the bats in the 

 world contract rabies. Those that do suffer the disease 

 die from its effects. Fewer than ten cases of rabies in the 

 United States and Canada in the past 40 years have 

 been attributed to rabies. By way of contrast, more peo- 

 ple die annually from bee stings or from attacks by their 

 own pets. 



Bats are extremely valuable in medical research 

 because of their unique morphological and physiolog- 

 ical adaptations as flying mammals. Most have highly 



"The Bats ot Illinois" is adapted from "Aerial Acrobats ot the Eve- 

 ning Sky," by David A. Saugey, which appeared in the November/ 

 December 1988 issue of Arkansas Game and Fish, published by the 

 Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. David Saugey is a wildlife 

 biologist with the United States Forest Service. Mr. Gardner, who 

 serves the Illinois State Natural History Division as assistant 

 research biologist, Section of Faunistic Surveys and Insect 

 Identification, emended and adapted Mr. Saugey's article with re- 

 spect to the bat species found in Illinois. 



