![]() ![]() And echolocation is this method of making a sound picture of the world. So, you probably know a lot of the bats that live in North America, where we are today in Washington, D.C., use echolocation to find things to eat. ![]() And all over the world, they make their living in different ways, but a lot of them echolocate. Bats are unique in that they're the only mammals that actually can fly under their own power.īats are found all over the world, so they're on every continent except Antarctica. They have hair like you and me, they feed their young with milk. And if you could share, I think we have some slides to show, that's more of our behind-the-scenes collection. And I think it's those differences that actually make them very interesting.Īnd before we get into our activity for today, I wanted to tell you a little bit about bats and about how different and crazy they are. And I think if you look at bats in Hawaii versus bats in Virginia, they can be very different. They live in diverse places they have diverse behaviors. They tend to have a bad rap and can be kind of spooky on the outside, but they're really interesting. I'm also very excited to talk about bats, as you can see, I very like much bats. So, like Ingrid said, lots of different people are using the collection for lots of different reasons and it's important that we make sure that the collection is still around for years to come in the future. I'm in the Museum Studies program at GW and I've been working with Ingrid to learn more about the day-to-day care and management of a natural history collection. And Lauren here today is here to learn too. They are used by scientists who are looking to discover all sorts of new things about bats and their habitats and the natural world we live in. So, every drawer behind you is filled with bats that are prepared in that way? These are some of our spooky bat specimens. And it's my job to take of things like this. This collection is used every day by scientists who come to visit from around the world. We have 600,000 specimens behind the scenes here at the Smithsonian and 138,000 bats. ![]() We are coming to you today live from our bat collection. This black and orange painted bat, who is in the Halloween spirit already, is my favorite specimen in the collection. Just like my favorite specimen, who I have right here. And I love Halloween because it gives us a chance to take a closer look at spooky things, to see how wonderful they are when you look at them more closely. I am Ingrid Rochon, and I am a collection technician here in the Division of Vertebrate Zoology. We have Ingrid Rochon and Lauren Caspers, and they also look like they are in the Halloween spirit. So, without further ado, let me introduce our wonderful experts. Hello, Taylor, we do get to see real bats today. So, it looks like about everybody is joining us here. And so, today's program is super fun, and we hope that you enjoy it. ![]() And we also have an ASL interpreter today who will be joining us just in a moment. We also have live captions for today's program, so you can turn those on by going to your Zoom menu bar and activating show subtitles. So, today's program is a webinar, so you cannot turn on your video or your audio, but you can send us questions through the Q&A where we have a team of wonderful Smithsonian educators, thank you, Smithsonian educators, for responding directly to questions. For now, I just want to share a couple of logistics for today's program. And I'm going to introduce them in a moment. We have our experts coming to you from the Division of Vertebrate Zoology here at the museum to talk all about our favorite spooky specimen, bats. We are so happy to be joining you live from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History with today's edition of Spooky Smithsonian Science How. Actually, let me get in spirit right now. Welcome to Smithsonian Science How! We have an extra spooky edition today, celebrating the season. Spooky Collections and Spectacular Bat Adaptations! ![]()
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