Bats are misunderstood and are quite harmless to people if not provoced. Contrary to misconceptions, disease transmission from bats to humans is easily avoided. If you don't handle bats is extremely rare to be harmed by them. Bats navigate by means of a sophisticated echolocation system when they fly. The bat sends out sound energy signals which are reflected back giving the location of an object as well as its texture. They can avoid human hair with great accuracy, even in total darkness, giving the myth that bats are blind a great bust!

Bats are the primary predator of night-flying insects. They feed on mosquitoes that spread discease and codling moths, bollworm moths and other insects that cause great damage to farm crops. The Big Brown Bats which live primarily in agricultural areas, fed on June bugs, cucumber beetles, stinkbugs, corn rootworms, grasshoppers, and leafhoppers. A colony of 150 Big Brown Bats in one summer season will consume 38,000 cucumber beetles, 16,000 June bugs, 19,000 stinkbugs, and 50,000 leafhoppers and 19 million corn rootworms. A single Little Brown Bat can eat som 500 mosquitoes in just one hour's time, or nearly 3,000 every night. A bat may consume nearly 50 percent of its body weight in insects nightly.

If you have any hesitation about attracting these magnificant creatures to your yard you can relax. More people injure themselves in their haste to escape from a bat swooping for insects than are ever harmed by bats. The myth of bats flying into people's hair is the result of bats being attracted to the insects that often swarm around our heads. Bats are the least likely of mammals to transmit rabies. Fewer than .05 percent of bats contract rabies, and rabies is rarely spread withiin individual colonies.