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Interesting Bat Facts

Here are some really interesting facts about those nocturnal creatures that you see flitting back and forth at dusk and at night time.

There are over 1,300 species of bats worldwide and 17 of them breed in the United Kingdom.

One of these creatures are called the pipistrelle, which weighs about 4-7g (about the same weight as a 2p piece).

There are three species of pipistrelle and they are known as the common pipistrelle, the soprano pipistrelle and the rarer Nathusius’ pipistrelle. If you folded the wings of a pipistrelle, it would fit into a matchbox.

Another common species in Britain is the noctule and is one of Britain’s larger bats and weighs up to 40g (which is about the weight of a £1 coin).

The noctule emerges early in the evening and can be seen flying in a straight line high overhead, before suddenly swooping down to catch an insect. The noctule is around the same size as a starling and has long narrow wings.

The brown long eared bat is very difficult to spot and usually comes out after dark and flies close to trees and in between branches. It’s flight is slow and hovering, a bit like a butterfly.

All British bats eat insects and they eat a large amount of insects as flying uses up a lot of their energy.

For example a pipistrelle will eat up to 500 tiny insects in an hour and some species even eat spiders.

Bats are not actually blind, as we are led to believe. They can see, but at night their ears are their most important asset as they fly around and look for food using a system known as echolocation. Which is a system that uses sound waves or reflected sound to “see” things.

Bats don’t make nests, but they do hang upside down in caves or creep into crevices in trees to roost.

Some bats shelter in buildings, behind hanging tiles and boardings and in roof spaces.

During April-June the female bats gather in maternity groups, by deciding on where to give birth and look after their young safely, until the babies can fly and feed themselves.

Female bats usually give birth during the months of June and July, and tend to have just one single pup, suckling them frequently until the young start to fly at 3 weeks old.

Mating occurs during the months of September to November. Bats feed as much as they can to prepare them for hibernation.

British bats hibernate during the winter as their are not enough insects around for them to eat.

They usually hibernate in a disused tunnel or cave which is cool and humid and safe for them. They control their heartbeat and breathing and their body temperature drops so that it reserves their energy.

You might see some bats flying around during the winter time, if they need to find a new shelter or need to look for food and water to boost their energy.

For tiny mammals, bats live surprisingly long lives. If they survive their first winter, then a pipistrelle can usually live for 5-6 years with some species living up to 30 years.

A Daubenton bat is also known as a “water bat”. It’s because they use their feet or tail to fish insects from a water’s surface.

What does the saying ‘Yankee Dodge’ mean?

With the words “We are going to try a Yankee Doge today, gentlemen, for making men insensible”, Robert Liston, senior surgeon at University College Hospital in London prepared to perform the first public operations in Europe involving the amputation of a limb while the patient was anaesthetised with Ether.

“The Yankee Dodge” to which Liston was referring to had been practised two months earlier on 16th October 1846, at a Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

The hospitals first surgeon and principal founder, Dr John Collins Warren. He had successfully removed a tumour from the jaw of a 20 year old printer named Gilbert Abbot.

Ether was administered to the patient by a local dentist, Dr William Thomas Green Morton, who only a month earlier had become the first dentist to remove a tooth painlessly from a patient anaesthetised with ether.

Once Abbot was unconscious, Dr Warren cut away the tumour and shortly afterwards Abbot safely came around. ‘Did you feel any pain?’Morton asked him. ‘No,Sir,’ replied the young man ‘only some blunt thing scratching my cheek!’

Previously, operating without anaesthetics, surgeons severed arms and legs at high speed, while the patient, usually blindfolded and tied to a stretcher, remained fully conscious and screaming with pain, despite the piece of leather given to bite on.

The more compassionate surgeons mesmerised or hypnotised their patients, half suffocated them, made them intoxicated, sedated them with opium or froze the part of the body which was to be operated on.

Before serving as the anaesthetist at Warren’s history making operation, Dr Morton had been the partner of another Boston based dentist, Horace Wells, who was the first person to use nitrous oxide, or laughing gas as an anaesthetic in dental surgery.

In 1844 Dr Wells had one of his own teeth extracted while under the influence of nitrous oxide, and he later used it successfully on several patients.

Morton, however preferred ether as a means of killing pain. After his successful demonstration of surgical anaesthetic in a hospital, Morton patented his discovery under the name of ‘Letheon’.

Meanwhile, Wells campaigned to have his own use of nitrous oxide, which he claimed was safer than ether, recognised as a surgical ‘first’. It was against this background that on 21st December 1846, the Scottish born Robert Liston prepared to follow Dr Warren’s example and operate on an anaesthetised patient.

Robert Liston Surgery — Robert Liston performing an amputation in front of a crowd of spectators. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Liston entered the hospital’s operating theatre wearing his customary coat and apron which were encrusted with months of accumulated dirt. A few moments later the patient, a butler named Frederick Churchill, was bought in. He had a diseased thigh that needed amputating.

A colleague of Liston’s then applied the anaesthetic by means of an inhaling device containing a sponge soaked in ether. Liston took a long, serrated knife and rapidly sawed into the thigh. He completed the amputation in some 30 seconds without Churchill feeling a thing. Liston then turned to a spellbound audience and said ‘This Yankee Dodge, gentlemen, beats mesmerism hollow!’

Among the onlookers that days was Joseph Lister, a 19 year old student who attended several of Liston’s anatomy lectures at University College.

Lister was appalled by the unhygienic conditions in the operating theatres of the day, which he felt must put patients at risk of infection.

At the time, the death rate in British hospitals following successful amputations was one in every three patients. In nearly every case the patients who died, did so a short while after their operations as the result of infected wounds, generally known as ‘Hospital Gangrene’.

Most doctors held that infection in operation wounds was caused by the entrance of air. Lister however, believed that germs in the air, not air itself, were responsible for the deaths in the overcrowded, unclean wards. Twenty years went by before Lister put his theory to the test.

In 1861, he was appointed surgeon to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Over the next five years he noted that some 50 per cent of the patients in the male accident ward died from sepsis, or blood poisoning, caused by infected wounds.

Then in 1865 Lister came across the work of the French chemist Louis Pasteur, who argued that disease was spread by airborne microbes, or germs.

Lister began to experiment with antiseptics, which he hoped would act to form a barrier between the wounds and the germs. After trying several chemical agents, he settled on carbolic acid, which until that time had been used mainly for cleaning foul smelling sewers.

Lister decided to try out the acid on patients with compound fractures, in which the broken bone had pierced the skin, often bringing about death through infection.

His first such patients was an 11 year old boy named James Greenlees, who was admitted to the infirmary on 12th August 1865. James’ left leg had been fractured and Lister dressed the wound with carbolic acid. The leg was then splinted and bandaged, four days afterwards the dressing was duly removed. There was no sign or smell of suppuration.

Over the next few days two more antiseptic dressing were applied and the wound began to heal. Just over six weeks after his accident, James Greenlees walked out of the hospital with his leg healed.

Who were the Nachthexen?

The Nachthexen or “Night Witches” was the German nickname given to the formidable female aviators from the 588th Soviet Night Bomber Regiment. The pilots saw their name as a badge of honour.

This regiment flew bombing missions for the Soviet Air Force against the German military during the Second World War. The female squadron trained as pilots, navigators and engineers.

The group consisted of 40 two person crews, flying over 30,000 missions and dropping 23,000 tons of bombs.

Each pilot flew more than 800 missions often carrying out eight every night. They were an unique unit, being the only all female combatants during World War II and were the most highly decorated female squadron in the Soviet Union Air Force.

The Night Witches flew biplanes made of wood and canvas which were originally built for crop dusting and training purposes. But this made them light which made it easier for the women to fly them. However, because of this it also made the planes slow and they could only carry six bombs at a time.

There were no parachutes on board the planes and the female pilots had no radar or technology to help guide them, only a compass and maps.

Due to the aeroplane cockpit being open, pilots would often suffer from numbness and frostbite during their flights.

The planes were very slow, with the maximum speed of the biplane being slower than the “stall” speed of German aircraft, so the Night Witches used the attack method of idling the engines and gliding before dropping a bomb.

This stealth mode left only the whooshing sound of the wind to give away their location and the Nachthexen would often return from the missions with bullets through their maps, planes and helmets.

The German fighters in their highly advanced aircraft feared the Night Witches because of their bravery and stealth.

Who is the longest serving First Lady of the USA?

The longest serving First Lady of the United States of America was a woman named Anna Eleanor Roosevelt and she was known as one of the most outspoken first lady’s of the White House.

Eleanor Roosevelt was born on 11th October 1884 in New York City into the Roosevelt dynasty and she had a very privileged and political upbringing.

Her uncle was Theodore Roosevelt, who was the President of the USA from 1901-1909.

When Eleanor was 10 years old she lost both her parents to diphtheria. She was sent to England to be educated and became a strong, confident and independent woman. She chose to work as a social worker which served her well in later life.

In 1905, she married Franklin Delano Roosevelt, her distant 5th cousin and they went on to have six children. Franklin was a senator and Eleanor was active in the American Red Cross during World War I.

In 1921, Franklin contracted polio, which left his legs paralysed but Eleanor persuaded Franklin to continue in politics and with her help he became the 32nd President of the United States in 1933.

Whilst Eleanor Roosevelt was the first lady, she changed the role of purely being a hostess to that of a politician.

She spoke passionately about women’s rights, human rights, racial discrimination, welfare, workers’ rights and children’s issues.

She worked with the Women’s Trade Union League to abolish child labour and set up a minimum wage.

Eleanor was also active in the civil rights movement insisting on equal rights for everyone, regardless of race, even going so far as to break tradition and invite several African-Americans into the White House for social and political causes.

As the policy of presidential terms was different back in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he spent four terms in office from 1933 to 1945, which spanned across the Great Depression and World War II. This is how Eleanor Roosevelt remains to be the longest serving first lady of the USA.

The policy has however now changed, so that a sitting president can only serve a maximum of two consecutive terms (8 years).

Eleanor’s husband Franklin died in 1945 and the then Vice President, Harry Truman became president.

Truman appointed Eleanor as a delegate to the United Nations, a post she held from 1945-1953.

She became the Chair of the UN’s Human Rights Commission and during her time she helped to co-write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 1961, at the age of 77 years old, the new president John F. Kennedy appointed Eleanor to become involved in the UN again along with the National Advisory Committee of the Peace Corp and also the chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Eleanor was known as one of the greatest humanitarians with an overwhelming sensitivity to those in need.

She sought out political and social change wanting to make the world a fairer and better place before sadly passing away on 7th November 1962.

What did the Astronomer Galileo Galilei discover?

On 7th January 1610, the astronomer Galileo Galilei turned his newly built telescope on a speck of light moving slowly across the clear night sky above the Italian town of Padua.

The dot he stared at was the planet Jupiter.

To Galileo’s astonishment, the planet was attended by what he saw as ‘four little stars’. They were in fact moons, in orbit around their giant companion.

The sight, at once, challenged the traditional Church dominated concept of the universe, in which all heavenly bodies were believed to circle the Earth.

Galileo’s discoveries were to lead to a full-scale confrontation between the Church and a revolutionary new view of the universe.

Orthodox beliefs about the nature of the universe were rigid and long established. For some 300 years, the Catholic Church and universities had accepted the theories proposed by the ancient Greeks.

In particular the beliefs about the universe held by Aristotle and Ptolemy. According to them the Earth lay fixed at the centre of the universe, with the heavenly bodies moving around it. Since no one could see flaws in the Moon, planets and stars, they were considered to be models of perfection, which revolved in circles, the most perfect of shapes.

The Church seized upon the Greek view as backing for its ‘divine’ mission – to help sinful humanity towards heavenly perfection. In support of this two beliefs were vital.

Firstly, the heavens should always be seen as perfect and secondly, the Earth on which mankind dwelt must be the stable centre of all things. Consequently, the theories that had been advanced by Aristotle ad Ptolemy supporting this concept became religious dogma.

By Galileo’s time, this dogma looked a little threadbare. A Polish priest and mathematician named Nicholas Copernicus had in 1543 suggested that planetary motions could be more readily accounted for if the Sun was placed at the centre of things.

In 1600, a radical Italian thinker, Giordano Bruno, was burnt at the stake for his heresies, one of which was his insistence that the Earth moved around the Sun. Galileo knew what he was up against, but he also knew the strength of his own scientific expertise.

In 1582, at the age of 18, Galileo had already begun the work that later led him to formulate several basic laws of motion.

Then in 1609, when he was a Professor of Mathematics at Padua, he heard of a Dutch spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey, who had put two lenses in a tube to make a primitive telescope.

Galileo made one for himself, which magnified just three times. He bought it to Venice, and sold the idea to the Venetian leader, the Doge, for it’s military potential – with a telescope, ships could be identified from a greater distance.

Within months, Galileo had made a second and a third telescope, which magnified up to 32 times.

It was this third, improved telescope that Galileo was to turn upon the skies in 1609-10. Discoveries came rapidly, each of them a further challenge to religious dogma.

For instance, he discovered there was nothing perfect about the surface of the moon – it had craters, mountains and plains.

The Sun, so far considered ‘inviolate’ had spots on it and Jupiter had its own moons, which did not circle the Earth.

Venus had phases, from full to new, which would have been impossible unless it was in orbit around the Sun, rather than around the Earth. Also, many previously unseen stars were now in view by the thousands.

Therefore, Galileo’s telescope showed convincing evidence that we live on an Earth that orbits the Sun, an Earth this is a mere planet and not the centre of Creation.

Copernicus was right, and Church dogma was wrong, as Galileo’s 1610 book, Siderius Nuncius, ‘Starry Messenger’ made clear.

Other observations were made and published showing that planets did not even move in circles.

On the basis of detailed observations by the German astronomer, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who was a colleague of a Danish astronomer Tycho Braha (1546-1601), it could be seen that the planets moved in eclipses or ovals.

Kepler devised three laws to account for the speed and orbit of a planet, supporting the theories of Copernicus and Galileo.

Although proving that the Earth moved was not easy for Galileo, as he had observational problems which cast doubt on his work.

Some argued that Galileo’s telescope was unreliable. Then in 1615, the Church took up the challenge. The doctrine that the Sun was the centre and immovable, said the pope, was ‘false and absurd’ formally heretical and contrary to the Scriptures.

Galileo was told to change his views. He retired from public life and only ventured back into print in 1632 in support of Coppernicus with his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems.

As a result of this heresy, Galileo was in 1633 summoned to Rome to recant. Threatened with torture, he did so – while muttering some accounts say – ‘E pur si muove’ (‘And yet it moves’).

He remained under virtual house arrest until his death in 1642, though this did not prevent the spread of his ideas.

Religious dogma had begun its retreat in the face of science, but it was another 359 years before, in 1992, Pope John Paul II formally rehabilitated Galileo, blaming his conviction for heresy on ‘tragic mutual incomprehension’.

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