Bottom Line Bat Facts You Need to Know
Here’s a list of the top 10 things you should know about Big Brown bats likely to turn up in your Ohio home:
1. Bats are protected warm-blooded mammals responsible for eating literally millions of crop-destroying and annoying insects each year.
2. Bats are not blind, and they are not afraid of light. They navigate through echolocation.
3. Bats consider humans as predators and are only trying to escape from us if they mistakenly intrude upon our living space within a home. Bats can not survive in the heated portion of an Ohio home in the winter.
4. Bats are relatively long-lived mammals; a 13- to 18-year life span is typical. Bats are slow to reproduce, giving live birth usually to a single pup or twins once a year.
5. Big Brown bats (commonly found in many portions of Ohio) are house- and building-dwellers throughout the year. Another species commonly found in the state — the Little Brown bat — prefer more temperate caves for hibernation.
6. Bats should never be trapped, poisoned, harmed or scared out of an attic. Pesticide use on bats is also prohibited.
7. Bats are “excluded” from a home, similar to window screens which “exclude” insects from entering a home. One-way doors are applied on bat activity points to allow exit, yet no re-entry is allowed — thereby excluding bats permanently and humanely from the home.
8. Bats should not be excluded from your home during maternity season.
9. Big Brown bats that roost in homes live in colonies, meaning that when you find one bat in your home, there are probably more hidden out of sight.
10. Bats are not rodents, and they do not chew to gain entry into your home. They do have tiny, sharp teeth ideally suited for grasping their only food source, insects.