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Grade 3 Teachers
Convent Elementary School
Orleans, Ontario


The Flying Fox Bat

Flying fox bats do not use echolocation to find their food. You can call the flying fox Pteropas Sceprlotus. The flying fox has long, slender wings that can wrap completely around it's baby. A large group of flying fox bats swarming a roost are on an Indian Ocean island.

The head of the Flying Fox resembles that of a fox. It has large ears and a long, pointed snout. Flying foxes use their keen eyesight and hearing to find food. A flying fox eats guava fruit. Baby flying foxes are very large when they are born. The Flying Foxes are found in Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Barma, Sri Lanka and Moldive Island in the Indian Ocean. Bats wings are made of their extra-long fingers and forelimb bones that support thin, elastic membranes. Two membranes, top and bottom, are sandwiched together over the bones on each wing. Though flying foxes are large, many predators consider them bite-size. Cats, dogs, raccoons and skunks eat flying foxes.

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The Flying Fox bat has a red coat. If the Flying Fox is a female it weighs 310-369 grams. If it is a male, it weighs 350-604 grams. The Flying Fox eats peaches and apricots. The Flying Fox has very good eyesight. The Scientific way of saying the Little Red Flying Fox is Pteropus Scapulatus. Other names for the little red Flying Fox is Collared Fruit bat, Collared Flying Fox, and Reddish Fruit Fox.

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Bats are not boring,
they are great mammals. 
A mammal who flies gracefully in the air
 Together we will save them
 Save them if we dare.

Information, poem, and graphic by Binh-Tam

Craseonycteris thonglongyae

The Craseonycteris thonglongyae is the smallest bat weighing from 1.8 to 2.0. gm. That is a third less than a penny.

It has a wingspan of 16 cm. (6.29 in.)

Most bats roosts in caves, hollow trees, foliage, crevices in rocks, and in spaces under the bark.

The Craseonycteris thonglongyae is only as big as a grown man’s hand!
They are the smallest mammal on earth!

His nickname is ‘BUMBLE BEE.’

Newborn bats are large. Weighing 15-30% of their mother’s weight after giving birth.

Bat’s avoid..
Bat’s avoid winter by migrating and hibernating.

Craseonycteris thonglongyae is brown and black.

He lives in the Southeast Asian rain forest.

Fruit Bats
by Kendra T. and Sarra L.

One male takes care of 8 female bats. Fruit bats like other bats. If the fruit bat gets hot, it may use it's wings to cool off. Bats are blind. Bats use echolocation. Bats hang from their feet during the day. They may hang with their wings wrapped around them. Fruit bats cannot land on grass fully. Bats live in colonies and camps. They are one of the largest species of bats and one of the most important to humans.

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The Hammerhead Bat
by Kris McC.

I know that the hammerhead bat is the lagest continental African fruit bat. They have a large square head, large hanging lips, split chin and a warty snout. All hammerheads have white tufts of hair at the base of the ears. They have a whitish collar on their shoulders.  The hammerhead bat lives on juices from figs and other fruits. The bats pick the fruit from one tree,then eat it in another tree. It uses it's tri-folded tongue to suck up the juices from the fruits.

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by Victoria W.

We saw 3 kinds of bats at the museum:

1. Big brown bat
-with it’s wings spread, it is about the size of my hand
-It can fly at 35 km/h

2. Little Brown Bat
-It is half the size of my hand
-It is the most common bat in Canada
-They can live for 30 years

3.Keen’s Bat
-It is a little bigger than my hand
-It is the rarest of Canadian bats

Bats cannot see. They use radar to navigate. Bats use radar, or echolocation, so they won’t bump into things, and to catch their food.

How does radar work?

1.The bat sends out ultrasonic sounds with his mouth opened half way.
2. Ultrasonic sounds reflect off obstacles such as bugs and return to the bat.
3. The bat analyzes the echo and catches it’s prey.

Other Things:

1.Bats are the only mammals that can fly.
2. In fall, bats gather together in caves to hibernate.

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by Krista G.

One-fifth of all mammal species are bats. A writer named D.H. Lawrence once said that bats had "wings like bits of umbrella." When nightfall comes you can be sure that is when bats will fly about looking for flies, moths and mosquitoes to eat.

Most bats in North America eat insects. They go south in winter to find food and they come back in the summer. To hunt for insects, bats use their ears. When the bat is flying, it makes a high-pitched noise, which bounces and echoes off everything it hits, including trees and people. Bats know which objects are food, and get it by using their mouths and wings to catch them. This way of finding their food is called echolocation.

Bats sleep upside-down and they usually sleep in big groups, which are called colonies. They like to sleep in buildings which have high ceilings, like churches or barns. Some people who care about our environment say that bats tell us we have a healthy, natural world, and if there are no bats, this warns us that the environment is in trouble.

I studied the 'Greater Funnel-eared Bat (Family Natalidae). There are four species in this little-known family of insectivorous bats. These bats live mainly in tropical lowlands but can also be found to live in caves and in mines, which could be very high (3,000 feet above sea level). They can be found from the north of Mexico to the West Indies and in central Brazil. Their ears stand out and are like funnels and this is how these bats get their name. They have stick-like legs, which can be longer than the head and body. They look very delicate. The species' name 'Natalus' means related to birth. They look like newborns even though they are adults. They weigh less than 10 grams, and are bright orange or yellow in colour. When these bats fly, they look more like moths than they do mammals. Their large ears make them able to find very tiny insects very quickly.

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 The Greater Bulldog Bat
by Umal D.

I know that the greater bulldog bat is small. They are also dark-colored. They live in the forest. They hang from branches. It lives in places like Central and South America, and southern Mexico to northern Argentina. It weighs 60 to 90 grams. It's colour is brown to orange to almost white. It eats insects and fish. They roost in a group, in hollow trees, and caves. They are active at night.

This bathouse was built by Jamie R. and Marc S.

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