The secret lives of bats : my adventures with the world's most misunderstood mammals
Material type: TextPublisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015Description: xvi, 271 pages : color illustrations ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780544382275
- 599.4/074 B 23
- QL737.C5 T896 2015
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard Loan | Coeur d'Alene Library Adult Nonfiction | Coeur d'Alene Library | Book | 599.4 TUTTLE (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 50610019752562 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A lifetime of adventures with bats around the world reveals why these special and imperiled creatures should be protected rather than feared.
From menacing moonshiners and armed bandits to charging elephants and man-eating tigers, Merlin Tuttle has stopped at nothing to find and protect bats on every continent they inhabit. Enamored of bats ever since discovering a colony in a cave as a boy, Tuttle saw how effective photography could be in persuading people not to fear bats, and he has spent his career traveling the world to document them.
Few people realize how sophisticated and intelligent bats are. Tuttle shares research showing that frog-eating bats can identify frogs by their calls, that vampire bats have a social order similar to that of primates, and that bats have remarkable memories. Bats also provide enormous benefits by eating crop pests, pollinating plants, and carrying seeds needed for reforestation. They save farmers billions of dollars annually and are essential to a healthy planet.
Sharing highlights from a lifetime of adventure and discovery, Tuttle takes us to the frontiers of bat research and conservation and forever changes the way we see these poorly understood yet fascinating creatures.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Teenage discoveries -- Saving the gray myotis -- Tracking bat nightlife -- Investigating vampire bats -- Bats through a camera's eye -- Discovering frog-eating bats -- Finding America's most elusive bats -- Cacti that compete for bats -- Free-tailed bat caves and crop pests -- African adventures -- Bat-loving monks, tigers, and poachers -- Mysteries of bat-guiding flowers -- Bat foresters -- Fruit grower complaints -- A national park for bats -- Epilogue. Hope for the future.
The author describes his decades of research on bats, offering information on their physical traits, intelligent and social behavior, benefits, habitat, and conservation.
10-Adult.
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- Preface: A City That Loves Bats (p. ix)
- Acknowledgments (p. xiii)
- 1 Teenage Discoveries (p. 1)
- 2 Saving the Gray Myotis (p. 20)
- 3 Tracking Bat Nightlife (p. 43)
- 4 Investigating Vampire Bats (p. 58)
- 5 Bats Through a Camera's Eye (p. 73)
- 6 Discovering Frog-Eating Bats (p. 92)
- 7 Finding America's Most Elusive Bats (p. 112)
- 8 Cacti That Compete for Bats (p. 128)
- 9 Free-Tailed Bat Caves and Crop Pests (p. 138)
- 10 African Adventures (p. 158)
- 11 Bat-Loving Monks, Tigers, and Poachers (p. 173)
- 12 Mysteries of Bat-Guiding Flowers (p. 197)
- 13 Bat Foresters (p. 219)
- 14 Fruit Grower Complaints (p. 229)
- 15 A National Park for Bats (p. 235)
- Epilogue: Hope for the Future (p. 243)
- Bibliography (p. 252)
- Index (p. 264)
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
Tuttle, the founder of Bat Conservation International, sets out to motivate readers to care about conservation in this enjoyable collection of career travelogue stories. Hoping that having some fun and presenting good information to readers will work some magic, he describes the grandeur of bat communities discovered deep in secluded caves, recalls bat-related encounters with moonshiners and witch doctors, and shares stories of conservation successes. Tuttle really shines in his delightful accounts of complicated, risky, and expensive expeditions and creative efforts dedicated to getting the perfect nature photo. It can take 10,000 shots to get a single publishable image that shows a desired animal behavior, but that's the kind of image that Tuttle believes is critical to turn fear of bats into understanding. He details taming fragile bats to feed them by hand, getting ammonia poisoning from guano fumes while documenting massive colonies of freetailed bats, and creating a hotel room studio with furniture replaced by rainforest plants to create the impression of a shot taken high in the forest canopy. Tuttle shares his drive to document the creatures he loves with subtle humor and contagious, unsubtle passion. 40 color photos. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Anyone who has ever seen one of Merlin Tuttle's crystal-clear photographs of bats is familiar with him, even if they don't know his name. In this new memoir-cum-love-note to the Chiroptera, Tuttle tells of how he became enamored of bats at age 17 by climbing into a cave full of roosting gray myotises (a small, insect-eating bat) and discovering how gentle they were. Though he met his share of moonshiners and politicians who were skeptical of the value of bats, through his research as a graduate student he helped convince the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the gray myotis as endangered. This helped stop needless destruction of their maternity colonies in caves. As he began to study bats all over the world, he also served tirelessly as their advocate, convincing farmers, landowners, and city dwellers that bats are beneficial members of their local ecosystems. But it was when he discovered that no one had ever produced good photographs of bats exhibiting their natural behaviors that a conservation star was born, for it was through Tuttle's beautiful bat photographs that the general public, via the aegis of National Geographic and countless books, discovered how cool and cute! bats could be. Tuttle's tales of stalking bats, and of the discoveries he and fellow researchers have made, will make bat lovers out of every reader.--Bent, Nancy Copyright 2016 BooklistKirkus Book Review
Bats are "sophisticated, beautiful, even cute, quite aside from their crucial roles as primary predators of insects, pollinators of flowers and dispersers of seeds," writes Tuttle, an ecologist who has championed their cause for more than 50 years. The author's cover stories and photographs have been featured in National Geographic and other magazines, and he has traveled the globe to study bats in their natural cave habitats, risking his life in the process. After obtaining a doctorate in bat biology, Tuttle worked as the curator of the Milwaukee Public Museum. In 1982, he resigned and founded the advocacy organization Bat Conservation International to enlist support for these much-maligned mammals that are in danger of becoming an endangered species. Bats are wrongly accused of destroying crops and spreading diseases such as rabies, and they are confused with their mythical blood-sucking namesakes. Tuttle sets the record straight, showing the important role bats play in pest control and their potential boom for farmers. "A single bat could catch thousands of insects in just one hour," he writes. "Bats ha[ve] a far better record of living safely with humans than even our beloved dogs, andthey also play essential roles in supporting human economies." Using implanted microchips to track their behavior, scientists have established that certain bats are comparable to elephants in their ability to maintain complex social relationships. They have highly sophisticated hunting practices and are altruistic within their groups. Tuttle notes that it is not unusual to find as many as 100,000 bats clustered together hibernating. His fascination with them began when he was 12 and he observed them in a cave near his Tennessee home. Encouraged by his father, who was a botanist, he explored the local caves where bats hibernated and studied their migratory behavior. Tuttle's recent attempts to photograph them in their natural habitat have led him through many hair-raising adventures, which he entertainingly chronicles. A page-turning memoir of curiosity aboutand dedication toa significant part of the natural world. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Dr. MERLIN TUTTLE is an ecologist, wildlife photographer, and conservationist who has studied bats worldwide for more than fifty years. He founded Bat Conservation International in 1982. His work has been featured in Science , the Wall Street Journal , The New Yorker , and National Geographic .There are no comments on this title.