Little brown bat Facts for Kids

Little brown bats fly at night. They hang upside down to sleep. They eat lots of bugs, like mosquitoes.

A little brown bat makes clicks and squeaks too high for people to hear and listens for the echoes that bounce back from insects, which is how it finds them in the dark. In the daytime it sleeps hanging upside down in a hidden, dark place such as a barn, a cave or a hollow tree.

Bats are not blind: they see well, but they also use echoes to find tiny insects in the dark. A little brown bat eats a great many insects each night, which helps protect gardens and crops. In winter, when insects are gone, bats hibernate in caves. A disease called white-nose syndrome, caused by a fungus that grows on hibernating bats, has made their numbers fall in many places, so scientists are working on ways to treat it and people protect the caves where bats sleep.