Throughout the ages, bats have been victims of superstitious delusions.
The biggest is they all drink blood, but according to the National Park Service, only three species of vampire bats drink blood. And keeping vampires in mind, no bat turns into an undead bloodsucker, as seen in the movies.
These are just a couple of the misconceptions people through the centuries have believed about these important creatures of the night, and the Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter is setting the record straight with its new exhibit, “Soar with Bats: An Educational Exploration of Bats.”
The exhibit, showing through Jan. 8, 2023, not only debunks those lies but also shows the connection these winged mammals have with popular culture, said Hunter Klingensmith, Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter visitor experience and exhibit manager.
“We want people to come and hang out in the mysterious and often misunderstood world of bats with us,” she said.
The exhibit’s first few displays include a collection of Batman movie memorabilia signed by actors Ben Affleck, Christian Bale and Adam West, and features record covers from Prince’s soundtrack to Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman” movie, as well as a mirror bat-signal wrist cuff the Purple One wore during his concerts.
Other movie posters in the exhibit include Tod Browning’s 1931 “Dracula” featuring Bela Lugosi, Stephen Norrington’s 1998 Marvel film “Blade,” starring Wesley Snipes as the half-breed vampire hunter, and the 1960s soap opera “Dark Shadows” which showcased Jonathan Frid as the vampire Barnabas Collins.
“Soar with Bats” also includes Funko Pop figures and the General Mills cereal mascot Count Chocula.
Missing are references to Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” and Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” books and films because the exhibit only includes pop culture vampires with a bat connection, Klingensmith said.
There is also a section that shows how Louisville Slugger baseball bats are made from tree branches. Interestingly enough, Louisville’s minor-league baseball team is The Bats.
“A lot of the items came from the collection of Aaron Cleveland, chief operating officer of Build 4 Impact, the company the exhibit came from,” she said. “His goal is to tie these amazing animals into the cultural connections we have.”
In addition to these pop culture touchstones, the exhibit includes interactive, flip-panel maps that highlight bat-focused cultural stories, fables and mythology from around the world.
There are also some fun children’s books, bat-wing costumes and a little theater where kids and families can present a bat-themed play using puppets.
Cleveland uses the exhibit to open a discussion about the importance of the conservation of real bats, according to Klingensmith.
“They are introductions of why bats are important, not only to our ecosystem, but to people as well,” she said. “They are pollinators and help in seed dispersal and insect control, and their waste is used for fertilizer.”
The artifacts and panels lead to a glass case that houses 10 live Egyptian fruit bats, provided by Indiana WILD. The case is fitted with a see-through plastic dome that visitors can crawl into to get a closer look at the winged mammals.
Egyptian fruit bats are commonly found in zoo habitats, Klingensmith said.
“They are really friendly, and easy to work with, and the ones here have been around people their whole lives,” she said. “Since they are nocturnal, they sleep all huddled up in the corner during the day, and at night they move and fly all around the enclosure.”
Smith’s grocery store at Kimball Junction donates the fruit to feed the bats, Klingensmith said.
“They pick up the fruit and vegetables that wind up on the floor, and we pick up the batches every Friday and freeze them for the future,” she said. “We do supplement the food with other things, but the Smith’s donation is pretty significant.”
The bats eat a variety of fruit, but they aren’t particularly fond of apples and pears, Klingensmith said.
“They are into more tropical fruit — bananas and mangos. They also like citrus fruits like clementines and oranges, and grapes are also popular.”
The fruit hangs from the enclosure’s ceiling, and the bats are keen to make a mess while they eat, according to Klingensmith.
“They’ll suck the juice out of the fruit, but they won’t always eat the skin or the pulp,” she said. “They just spit that out, so at night we cover the walls and floor with some tarps, so we can just clean it up in the morning.”
Unlike Egyptian fruit bats, most of the 48 species of bats who are native to the United States eat insects, Klingensmith said.
“The bats that eat fruit are mostly found in Central and South America, more tropical climates in the world,” she said.
Bats that are indigenous to Utah include the hoary bat, the canyon bat, Townsend’s and Allen’s big-eared bats, the little brown and big brown bats, the western red bat and various species of vesper bats, to name a few, Klingensmith said.
“The one that we see on the preserve is the silver-haired bat, (a species of vesper bat),” she said.
“Soar with Bats” is the second Build 4 Impact exhibit to show at the Swaner EcoCenter, the other being “The Art and Science of Arachnids” in 2018, Klingensmith said.
“Since we had that connection, Aaron reached out to us as he was creating the bat exhibit last year with Exploration Works in Helena, Montana, and said, ‘I know you like bats, so this may be something you’d want,’” she said. “So, this is the second location for the exhibit since its debut at Exploration Works, and we’re excited to bring it here.”