Hello and welcome.
I'm Lucy Cooke, and I'm going to be taking you into the hidden
world of one of Britain's most endangered and least
understood animals, bats.
Bats are mammals like us.
Yet they're as alien as they could possibly be.
They're the only ones that can fly.
They see the world using sound...
BATS SQUEAKING
..and spend most of their life in total darkness.
They're hard enough to spot, let alone study.
So we're going to use the latest science to uncover
their surprising secrets.
We've come to Bryanston, in Dorset,
which is home to one of the UK's
most important bat roosts.
Inside this old building is a colony of greater horseshoe bats,
one of our rarest species.
And we've been following it for half a year.
We've seen the arrival of a new generation.
Discovered how their extraordinary bodies work...
That seems incredible that it's able to function
at such a low temperature.
..and enter their strange and complex social world.
Just so fantastically weird.
Today, we've brought together scientists and conservationists
for an event vital to the survival of the roost.
BATS SQUEAKING
Later on, we're hoping to witness the crucial moment when some
of the baby bats born here over the last few weeks,
leave the roost and fly out for the first time.
This is Bryanston in Dorset.
A former country estate that's now home to far more bats than people.
Our greater horseshoe colony has taken over what was once
the kitchens of an 18th century mansion.
It's now protected, part of a nationwide drive
to save this bat from extinction.
Earlier in the year, we installed a night vision camera
in the heart of the roost.
And today we're monitoring it from our marquee headquarters close by.
With me to take a first look inside is Dr Anita Glover,
of the Vincent Wildlife Trust, who takes care of this roost.
Anita, is that a cluster of pups in the bottom?
Yeah, so that darker cluster that you can see at the bottom
is all young bats kind of crushed together, which is something
that the mothers do when they go out to forage,
is they'll put the bats into this huddle.
Oh, look, here we go, this is the mum testing her wings.
And you really get a sense of that 40 centimetre wingspan.
The mothers teach their pups the skills they need
to fly in the safety of the roost.
Now, this is one of the young pups that's hanging onto the head
of its mother and practising flapping its wings.
I don't know about you, but I don't know how the mother
is holding on.
This is the very, very first inkling of flight,
and I just love these images.
I think they're fantastic.
Tonight, we hope to see some of these pups take
their first flight outside.
It's a vital milestone, because the future of the roost
depends on this next generation.
And Bryanston is one of only 35 greater horseshoe breeding colonies
in the whole of Britain.
Both their range and their numbers have shrunk drastically
compared to a century ago.
I've heard that in the UK, populations have actually crashed
of greater horseshoe bats by up to 90%.
I'm assuming that humans are involved in this somehow?
Yeah, sadly, yes.
Agricultural intensification, land-use change the use
of pesticides, which has affected food availability for them.
But also the destruction of their roosts.
Bats need a safe, dark space away from predators.
The attic here is ideal, and in one section,
Anita's team have built an enclosure that's specially heated
for mothers to have their young,
a wire mesh makes it easy for the pups to grip on.
You've had some success here, haven't you?
We have, so we took this building on in 1994,
and there was less than 100 bats in the roost at that point.
And over time, through protection of the site,
we've actually seen that number increase to over 300 now.
This evening, Anita will count them as they fly out,
to monitor how the colony's doing.
But greater horseshoes aren't the only bats we're following here.
You might be surprised to know that bats make up a quarter
of all mammal species in Britain.
There are 17 different types.
From tiny pipistrelles, as small as a pound coin...
..to noctules, as big as a starling.
Bryanston is a hot spot.
It's thought that over half our native species live here,
each with its own unique place in the ecosystem.
To study them, we've brought in a battery of technology,
cutting edge cameras to capture their behaviour, and ultrasonic
recording devices, audio moths that detect back calls
beyond the range of our hearing.
Conservationist, Ajay Tegala, is installing them
in places where we hope to find significant bat traffic.
First one's going by the clock tower, where it's suspected
there might be a roost of pipistrelles.
There's speculation as to whether bats roost in this clock tower,
but nobody knows for sure.
So this wonderful device will record the sounds emitted by the bats here.
And then, to a reasonable degree of accuracy,
it will be able to tell us what species have been here.
Some types of bat forage close to water,
so he's putting another audio off by the river.
We'll look at the results later, and if we find any new roosts,
they can be protected.
It's largely thanks to its protected status
that our greater horseshoe roost has thrived.
We began following it long before the new generation
of pups was born.
I first came here five months ago on a cold March morning.
because of its conservation status,
we needed a special license in order to enter.
Of all the animals I've studied and written about, from sloths
to frogs, bats are among the most otherworldly.
So what do you think the temperature is today?
It's pretty chilly, I think.
Well, I think it's probably about eight or nine degrees,
but the wind chill is probably making it feel a bit colder. Yeah.
Winter is a dangerous time for our bats as there are so few
insects to eat.
To survive it, they have to hibernate.
Do we need to whisper?
No, but we'll just talk quietly.
Talk quietly, OK.
I'll do my best, it's not one of my special specialities.
In cold conditions, bats enter a state called torpor.
Their body temperature drops and their vital systems slow down,
reducing their need for food.
Gosh, it's like a maze in here.
There is this one.
It would be fascinating to know the temperature of the bat, wouldn't it?
It would.
Ruud is here and he's got a thermal imaging camera
that's going to enable us to see what temperature that bat is.
Is that really...
The bat is only eight and a half degrees centigrade?
Wow, that's pretty much the temperature of the room.
That seems incredible that it's able to function at such
a low temperature.
When active, bats need to maintain a body temperature
of around 37 degrees centigrade, like most mammals, including us.
But in torpor, this can fall to as low as five degrees
and their heart rate slows to just ten beats a minute.
It's just absolutely mind-blowing to think about what's
going on inside the body of that animal right now.
How they managed to pull off that physiological feat
of allowing themselves to survive that degree of hypothermia.
In here, you've got relatively stable, cool, humid temperatures.
And that's what the bats are looking for in hibernation.
Chilly, though. I know, my nose is cold. Mine is.
My nose keeps running, it's so cold.
Bats are thought to have evolved in the tropics.
To adapt to colder climates,
they hibernate often in extraordinary ways.
In Japan, the tube-nosed bat makes itself a little igloo in the snow,
where it hides away for the winter.
In this footage, the spring thaw has melted the roof off its snow den
and the bat is coming out of torpor.
In cities, bats can be even more ingenious.
These pipistrelles in Holland are hibernating
in the cavity walls of a tower block, like living insulation.
At Bryanston, Anita and I search for more hibernating bats,
moving softly so as not to disturb them.
Gosh, it's a bit of a mission to get up here isn't it?
Definitely hidden themselves away.
Wow!
There's a lot more in here, aren't there?
There are, there are, it's difficult to say how many there are.
Just so fantastically weird.
I love bats, so cool.
What makes all this especially bizarre is that many
of the hibernating females have a sperm bank inside them.
They mated back in autumn, but haven't yet
started their pregnancy.
Instead, they keep the sperm alive in their body through the winter.
When spring comes, they use it to fertilise an egg
and the pregnancy finally begins.
Since the winter, our cameras in the attic
have continued to follow the colony's progress.
We've captured remarkable footage of pregnant females
and the arrival of their pups, which has never
been witnessed here before.
Joining me to take a look are Anita and leading bat scientist,
Professor Kate Jones.
So here we have a few weeks ago when the mums are still pregnant.
And I think it's just astonishing to see how large they are, really.
I mean, look at that, looks like a fluffy tennis ball, it's huge.
You can now see just how big her abdomen is.
And inside is a baby that when it's born,
is going to be up to a third of its mother's body weight.
Normally in mammals, it's only about a fifth of its body size.
So that's an enormous weight on the mother.
The females will have just one pup a year, but can have many
over a lifetime, as they sometimes live as long as 30 years.
Anita hopes there'll be at least 100 new pups this year,
to ensure the roost continues to grow.
Here, we've got a baby. Oh, wow, that's cool.
That looks like it's pretty young.
It's like a mini dragon.
Yeah, it is, that that's quite a young one.
When they're in their first few days, they just have huge wings
and a huge nose leaf and it doesn't seem to be much
in the way of a head and body, so they got, sort of,
some growing into their appendages to do over time.
This footage shows a pup in the earliest days of life.
They're born naked and blind...
..but develop rapidly.
This pup is about a week old.
Its eyes are now open and it has a light covering of fur.
That seems to make two babies on this one.
That's really uncommon for most UK bat species
to actually have twins.
So it's just possible that it was another pup that clambered
on and the mother tolerated it.
The pups have only two or three weeks to grow and develop,
ready for their first flight.
It's the most dangerous moment of their young lives.
And Kate's been finding out why.
In this quiet suburban street in Kent,
there's a most unusual home.
Here, Hazel Ryan looks after lost and injured bats.
Today, she's returning a pup to his roost at the top of a chimney.
Found close to death, Hazel's nurtured him back to health.
Still too young to fly, the pup climbs up towards the sounds
and the smells of his colony.
Just one of the 100 or so bats Hazel has cared for this year.
So this is one of my best rehabilitation rooms,
and it's a bit full at the moment, it's a really busy time of year.
We have 34 bats at the moment. 34? Wow!
This little one here, Yorkletts, he's one we've had...
Yorkletts? Yeah.
Well, we named them after where they came from,
so he came from a village called Yorkletts. He is tiny.
It's a bit sad really, because he was caught by cat.
We think he was probably only on his first or second flight out.
He's just at the stage where he's learning to fly
and a cat caught him and injured his wings.
We've had him for a little while and you'll see the holes
are actually beginning to heal.
Oh, I see, those are the holes.
You can see the little puncture wounds.
Bat wings have many blood vessels allowing their skin to heal
amazingly quickly, ten times faster than human skin.
While the bats are recovering, Hazel has to hand feed them.
The older ones munch on mealworms.
The younger bats, like Yorkletts, are fed with milk.
I'm testing the temperature.
Yeah, I just touch my top lip...
..as you would with a baby's bottle.
OK, so... It should feel warm but not hot. OK.
And then if you try... It's kind of the treating though, you know.
The side of the mouth. Hello.
Come on, Dude.
Once they get the hang of it, they will just latch onto the end
of the pipette.
Because, of course, they're mammals, just like us,
So they're feeding on milk. He's so tiny that...
Yeah, you're worried.
I'm worried that I'm going to drown him in milk.
As they recover, Hazel gives her bats flight training.
She does it here in a specially-built cage.
It's a rare opportunity for us to bring in specialist cameras
to observe bat flight and detail.
Today, Hazel has two bats of different species
with different flying techniques.
First, the aptly-named brown long-eared bat.
It's short, wide wings make flight slow but manoeuvrable.
Essential to navigate through foliage,
to snatch insects from leaves.
Those ears are incredible and therefore picking up tiny, tiny
insect sounds that are around the cluttered forest.
Next, a pipistrelle Britain's commonest bat.
Slimmer wings give it a smoother, faster flight.
It can reach speeds of up to 30km an hour,
ideal for capturing insects out in the open.
It's fascinating how the wing shape and the speed of the bat
can tell you so much about its biology and what it's feeding on
and where its foraging.
But the pipistrelle is a slow coach compared to the fastest bat
in the world.
The Brazilian freestyle has been clocked
at an astonishing 160km an hour.
Speedier in level flight than the fastest bird.
But what makes bats such accomplished flyers
is their extraordinary wings.
This is X-ray footage of a bat in flight,
filmed in a lab in the States.
It reveals how their wings are based on the same anatomy as our hands,
but with massively elongated fingers.
The forefingers make up most of the wing...
..while the thumb has evolved into a claw sticking out the front.
Before a bat can take off, its wing muscles need to be warmed up.
To find out how, ecologist Dr Liat Wicks
uses a thermal camera to record the temperature.
This bat's been inactive for a while,
so it's appearing cooler against the hand.
To be able to fly and sort of kick start their muscles,
they need to warm up quite quickly.
So what they have is something called brown fat.
This brown fat is concentrated between the shoulder blades
and it can be burned to produce extra internal heat.
So it'll take some minutes, and once it's warmed up
to its optimum flight temperature, it'll then become
more active and possibly take off.
Once in the air, bats have the opposite problem...
..cooling down.
Because they flap their wings up to 12 times a second,
their muscles produce so much heat it puts the bat
at risk of overheating.
The bat's body appears very, very hot, sometimes hotter
than a human face on the infrared. Wow!
Whereas the wings are relatively cool.
So where are they losing energy from?
So... How are they not exploding?
A recent study showed that they lose the majority of their heat
from their body, but it's still how - how are they doing that?
Right. So we're looking at how maybe it's radiating through
the fur itself. We're very early stages with baseline
data collection, but we are testing those theories.
Research like this is revealing the intricate natural engineering
that makes bats such amazing flyers.
Back at Bryanston, our greater horseshoe pups
are progressing through flight school.
They have to work their way up through a number of stages
before they can fly solo.
First, the wings stretch.
Next, the frenetic flap.
This exercises their flight muscles.
Here, a large pup is flexing its wings
while still clinging to its mother.
Finally, they attempt the micro test flight
in the safety of the roost.
This aerial debut lasts just six seconds.
To take off, our young pups simply have to let go.
It's a key advantage of hanging upside down.
The tendons in the bats' claws make them clamp shut
when bearing its body weight.
This means no energy is required to hang,
and they can do so for hours,
even months at a time,
until they need to take flight.
Recent research, in America, has been revealing
the remarkable ways different bats take off.
Most bats, really, they kind of take off from height
and they kind of just fall, and then start... Fall and fly.
Fall and fly. Yeah.
But there's also the vampire bats.
So, this one feeds on blood, but it's usually on cattle,
and so it needs to be running around on the ground.
So, it's learnt to leap from a standing point
up about three feet in the air.
Have a look at this.
Wow, that's amazing! It's like a Harrier jump jet.
Presumably, if you've been sucking the blood from a cow's foot,
you've got to make a quick escape.
Their muscles are so large,
and it's using its claws there to propel itself up,
and also giving it direction once it's left the ground.
That's take off. That's impressive.
Now, landing, that's really counterintuitive.
Landing is my favourite, this is the coolest part.
Bats have got to land on surfaces that are above it,
so it's got to try and somehow hook itself onto the ceiling.
So, it slows down,
it flips around,
and then lands.
So, this is the most amazing acrobatics I've ever seen.
It closes one of its wings - that makes it roll -
and then it uses its inertia to grab on to the ceiling with its feet.
So, it's using the speed of its flight to create the inertia
to then land. That's called a two-point landing.
But where exactly do bats go when they fly out
of their roosts at night?
Some of the most innovative research is happening in Bulgaria,
which has more types of bat than almost anywhere in Europe.
These limestone caves are home to 3,000 greater mouse-eared bats.
Dr Stefan Greif and Laura Stussholt are investigating exactly
where they go hunting and what insects they eat.
At dusk, they assemble a special trap
to catch some bats without harming them.
This is a harp trap.
The bat flies into these nylon strings, and then,
like in a cartoon... Well, sort of.
..it glides down and falls into this bag.
Next, they're going to take a bat
and attach a sophisticated GPS tag that can track its movements.
Now we put some glue on the back of the bat.
So, this is medical glue, skin glue, that they also use on humans,
so it's not harmful to the bat, and it actually dissolves
after a few days again. So the tag would fall off by itself.
We prefer to recapture the bat with the tag on,
so we know we really can get our tag back.
So, now this guy is finished and we can actually release him.
The tag also contains a tiny microphone
to record the sounds of the bat feeding,
and from that they can tell what insects it's eating.
But to retrieve all this information, Stefan and Laura
need to recapture the bats.
Now they're going to seek out one they tagged last night,
a single bat amongst 3,000.
It can get quite busy in here.
It's like a little bat circus when they fly all around your head.
It's over here.
You got it?
Got it.
Yay!
There we go.
Back at the research station, Stefan and Laura download the GPS data.
They discover the bat flew 22km nonstop,
touched down for 90 minutes in a wheat field to refuel on insects,
then returned home to the cave.
By using these GPS tracks, we can find out
where the bats are hunting and their feeding grounds.
Which means it's important for us
to make sure that these feeding grounds are kept preserved.
So, these GPS tracks can help in conservation.
Next, they listen to the audio recordings of the bat feeding.
First, it chomps its way through a hard shelled beetle.
They're a little bit crunchy, and they go on for a long time.
So, we've got a big meal this time.
Then, something a bit softer - a moth.
So, this is the sound of the chewing of the moth.
They're a little bit weaker
and they're not as crunchy as the beetles.
We get a good sense of the numbers of the prey that they're eating.
How many insects per night, on the ground and in the air.
That gives us a very good estimate of the intake, basically.
So, that means that we can start to quantify the impact
they have in the ecosystem.
Research like this shows the important role bats play
in keeping insect populations in check.
The more we learn, the more we can appreciate bats.
But it hasn't always been this way.
Bats have been feared throughout history,
and even today they're shrouded in myths.
When I say I study bats, people go, "Oh, bats get in your hair."
And when they say that to me, I say, "Well, they've got a sophisticated
echolocation system. What would they be doing in your hair?"
I think it's that thing of them being slightly in-between
creatures, aren't they? They're kind of neither one thing or another,
and that's a bit creepy in a way. Yes.
Even in the Bible, in the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament,
bats are described as being unclean. Yeah, that's true.
In the Middle Ages, there was, you know, that was a sort of...
European artists were depicting the devil as a bat.
In Dante's Inferno, when talking about the wings of Satan,
he says, "They're not feathered as a bird's wings are.
"They're bat-like and leathery, each fanned away the air."
In the black and white world of Christian morality -
angels had bird wings.
Demons, bat wings.
The nail in the coffin was when bats that drink blood
were discovered in the 17th century.
The author Bram Stoker kept among his papers an article
that mentioned these "vampire bats," now thought to have influenced
his famous creation - Count Dracula.
Bats became fully associated with evil,
and I think it's just incredibly unfair, isn't it, Kate?
Well, I love bats, so I would say that.
But they have all these services that they provide to us.
So, they have this huge role in insect control.
So, they eat thousands of insects.
There's a study in Texas where they were looking at
how well the bats were controlling the insects on this cotton crop,
and they estimated it was about a third of the value of the crop
was saved by the farmer by not having to apply pesticides.
Exactly, yeah. Another benefit - seed dispersal, as well,
they're really valuable at doing that,
and also as pollinators, too.
Am I right in thinking that the bat is one of the pollinators
of the agave plant - which would mean...
..no bats, no tequila?
THEY LAUGH
So, there's obviously a big vote for why we should love bats.
Perhaps the tide is turning.
Every year, more and more volunteers from all walks of life,
are getting involved in protecting bats.
Ajay went to Scotland to discover how.
This is Linlithgow Palace, near Edinburgh.
Once the residence of Mary Queen of Scots,
it's now home to hundreds of bats.
Today, the Lothians Bat Group, one of over 90 in the UK,
has come to survey them.
Amazing key, Bob.
I can't wait to see through this door.
Surveys like these feed into the National Bat Monitoring Programme,
an annual bat census to find out which species are most at risk.
Wow, what an incredible place.
We're on the lookout for a rare bat...
..the Nathusius' pipistrelle.
This tiny bat has been found to fly almost 2,000km,
from Latvia to Western Europe,
the longest known migration of any small mammal.
The group here wants to find out if there are any in the palace.
Leading them is Natalie Todman.
The Nathusius' pipistrelle, we've never recorded up here
in the palace, so we're really keen to see if we can find it.
And that's really quite rare, isn't it?
It is, yes, it's probably one of the rarest species in Britain.
But we don't know if they're actually roosting here,
so it'll be very interesting to see whether we're going to
record them here inside.
In the Great Hall of the palace, we spot our first bats.
To recognise the species, we all have detectors which can pick up
their ultrasonic calls and make them audible to us.
The frequency of the call is key.
This one's coming through at around about 55 kilohertz.
And that tells us?
THEY LAUGH
Which tells us this this is a soprano pipistrelle.
What we really would like to hear is something coming in below 40,
which would make it a Nathusius' pipistrelle. Absolutely.
Oh, I just love the sound, it's fantastic. Yeah.
I'm sort of torn, because I'm so fixed to the screen,
and yet I feel like I'm missing out on them flying above my head.
I know, that's the problem.
When you have a screen like this telling you so many good things,
it's such a temptation to watch this when,
really, what we want to do is watch the bats.
The dark nooks and crannies of the palace make it a great place
for other species to roost.
WHISPERING: We're looking at a Daubenton's bat which is clinging
to the wall, and we've got a really good view of it there.
Oh, yeah, it's lovely to see them like this.
It feels almost like we're intruders here,
because we're seeing it at such an intimate moment.
When you see bats on the wing, they look so powerful
and so, sort of, fearless.
But when you see just how small they are, they look very vulnerable.
VOICEOVER: Suddenly, there's exciting news from elsewhere.
Ooh...!
Natalie's got a Nathusius'. Got a Nathusius'?
We've just picked up our first Nathusius' pipistrelle
of the evening. Fantastic!
There's a couple up there, there's a Nathusius'
and there's a soprano pipistrelle, as well. Gosh.
You can actually see the Nathusius' is just slightly bigger.
A much lower frequency, coming in just around about 40, or just under.
It's actually really exciting to actually find them IN the palace,
not just around about.
Tonight is the first time the Nathusius' pipistrelle
has been spotted in Linlithgow Palace.
Did you all pick it up? Did you get it on your detectors?
Yes. Yes. Fantastic.
They're putting on a good show tonight.
It's too early to say if there's a Nathusius' roost here,
but this first sighting will prompt more research.
This is important conservation work that feeds in to
this national database. Yes, that's right.
The National Bat Monitoring Programme runs various surveys
throughout the summer, at various levels of expertise,
so anyone and everyone can get involved in them.
I've never been involved in something like this before.
So, to know that there's so many different kinds of bats
just a stone's throw from my house, but also that we have
rare bats here, it just makes it all the more exciting.
Back at Bryanston, the detectors we've placed around the site
will tell us which species are hunting here,
and perhaps even roosting.
While at the greater horseshoe roost, our cameras are uncovering
a fascinating and complex social world.
There's just a lot of activity all the time, day and night it seems.
They're grooming, and also you can see this lovely interaction
between those two, where they're almost lip touching.
I don't know whether they're sniffing each other for recognition
of individuals through smell, but we see quite a lot of that.
So, yeah, just constant activity.
The colony is matriarchal.
The adults are mostly female and often closely related -
mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces.
At this time of year, adult males tend to roost elsewhere.
For the pups, the roost is relatively safe -
but when they fly outside tonight, they'll encounter a raft of dangers.
They're out for the first time.
They don't really know, instinctively, what's outside.
Their mothers will know this landscape
like the back of their hands.
But for those young bats, they're going to have to stick with
other colony members, you know, just to be safe.
For pups who do get lost or injured,
a helping human hand can sometimes be a life-saver -
as Kate's been finding out.
I've come back to Kent to catch up with Hazel Ryan,
who rescues injured bats.
We've returned to the flight cage where the bats test their wings.
Previously, she introduced me to Yorkletts the pipistrelle pup.
Sadly, it didn't survive.
Her injuries were just too extensive from the cat
and she didn't make it, unfortunately. It's really sad.
It is. And, unfortunately, you know, a lot of young bats do die
because of cats. Yeah, it must be really difficult
when you're taking such great care of them.
But every one that does survive sort of makes up for that.
That makes the difference. Like Sheppey.
That's one of the bats that I've got to flight test today,
which I'm hoping we'll be able to release really soon.
You gave me Sheppey to keep warm.
That's right. He's getting warmed up, ready to fly!
I think he is pretty warm.
Can you feel him wriggling around?
He's actually in here...
..which is quite odd.
OK, thank you.
Aw! He's a juvenile male,
and unfortunately he got trapped in a house.
As a juvenile, I guess they can't fly as well,
they get a bit confused, and got in a house,
and then got completely trapped? Yeah.
They're like all youngsters.
They go exploring, they don't really know what they're doing.
Not very competent, you know, like teenage drivers!
But, luckily, he wasn't injured. Oh, OK.
He was just really starving.
He needed rehydrating, feeding up.
So we've been feeding him for a couple of weeks. He's really nice
and fat now - he's about doubled his body weight, I think.
That's brilliant.
Really, today is just the final test to make sure
that he can be released, hopefully, tonight.
Oh, that's brilliant.
We can let him go to the end of my fingers. Oh, my goodness.
Oh, there he goes!
So, this is how a bat with no injuries should be.
You can see how fast he's flying.
And he's coming round really fast...
..right over our heads. Just over our heads!
He's already an accomplished flyer now, so... Wow!
There he is. Whoa! See, he just heads for our heads.
That's brilliant.
So, we're going to go and release him back to the roost tonight? Yes!
And the family are really excited, the people who found him.
Oh, that's brilliant.
Are they going to be there tonight? They are.
They're so pleased that he's made a full recovery.
Hi, guys. Hello! Hi!
I heard you found a bat!
Yes!
My dad and my stepmum were on holiday, and I said that I'd come
over, put some milk in the fridge, get them some bread and things.
And I just looked at the sink in the kitchen, and it was just there.
So, how did you know who to call?
Google.
THEY LAUGH
I just Googled, "What to do if you find a bat in the house."
Was it the Bat Helpline that you called? Yes.
Yeah, National Bat Helpline. Yeah, the Bat Conservation Trust website.
Yeah. That's it, yeah.
And you did all the right things - put it in the box with the water,
making sure the lid was on tight.
So, Jessica, I heard that you really wanted to see this bat...
Mm-hm. ..and you didn't get to see it before.
No. I've been keeping him warm.
Because to fly, he has to have really warm wings.
Oh.
This is the smallest type of bat that we have in this country.
Oh, blimey. Yeah?
Was it all OK? He's fine now, yeah.
He's doing really well. He was just really hungry and really thirsty.
But now he's quite chubby cos we've given him lots to eat.
They look like elf ears.
They do, don't they? Yeah.
How do you feel about little Sheppey being released tonight?
I feel happy because it's going to be with its family and friends.
Aw, that's really sweet. Yeah, that's it.
I think that's true.
We've got plenty of space,
and we can see where he goes because he's going to, hopefully,
circle around for a little bit.
So, it's a really good evening to release a bat,
cos see how calm it is here?
Would you like to say goodbye to him?
Bye-bye, Sheppey.
I wasn't sure when we found him if he was going to make it at all,
so I'm really pleased that he's ready to go back.
If it wasn't for you, he wouldn't have survived.
Well, I think if it wasn't for you, Hazel,
he wouldn't have survived either!
So, the both of you, really, I think, need to take credit for this.
It's really brilliant.
OK, he's flapping...
Ooh, away he goes!
He's going to circle around a little... Where did he go?
Oh, he went that way, off and over... Oh, my goodness.
Well, he didn't seem to be... Over there, on the floor!
No, it's on the floor.
I thought he went that way! Yeah.
Well done, Jessica.
Well done! Flippin' heck.
Once Sheppey is warmed up more, we can try to release him again.
The delay is fortunate as another bat's shown up.
There's a bat flying just over there.
That's good news.
I think he wants to go.
There he is, he's circling round. That's brilliant!
He's with the other one, there he is.
He's following the other bat. There he is.
That's him and his friend going round and round.
It's really nice to see him flying around with another one.
I don't think he could have found a better house
to get trapped in, actually, to be honest.
THEY LAUGH
There!
Brilliant. Bye-bye, Sheppey!
For bats, getting airborne is only part of the challenge.
To navigate in the dark, they have to echolocate.
As they fly, they emit many shrill calls.
They're incredibly loud, up to 140 decibels,
noisier than a pneumatic drill.
Yet they're so high pitched, we can't hear them.
Here, we've slowed the calls down.
CHIRPING CALLS
The sound waves travel outwards, hit objects in the environment,
and bounce back as faint echoes.
These allow the bat to sense what's ahead and how far away it is,
anything from a tree to a tiny insect.
Remarkably, humans can learn to echolocate, too.
At Durham University, Dr Laura Thaler works with
visually impaired people who use echolocation to help them navigate.
But today she's going to teach me the basics.
I can't really imagine that I'm going to be able to navigate
using sound rather than vision today,
but I am very much looking forward to trying it out.
First, Laura's going to show me how sound bounces off objects.
The goal is...that I do this well enough so that you can
actually hear the difference.
Shh...!
VOLUME INCREASES
VOLUME DECREASES
VOLUME INCREASES
OK, that works. Good.
I did hear a difference. Yeah.
But to get an echo back that you can use,
you need a much shorter, sharper sound.
A mouth click...
SHE CLICKS MOUTH
..is a very brief sound.
LUCY CLICKS MOUTH
That's better, isn't it? Yeah.
SHE CLICKS
Now I'll try to use my clicks to help me find
the edges of an obstacle while I'm blindfolded.
What I would like you to do is click and move sidewards,
so that you can use your own sound feedback to determine
once you've passed the obstacle.
So, you want me to walk sideways like a crab whilst clicking...?
Yes.
..to see if I can judge where the obstacle is?
Yes, yes.
LUCY CLICKS
I got it right! I thought that's where the change was! Brilliant.
Someone who's taken part in Laura's research is Kerrie Brown.
She lost her sight to eye cancer as a child,
and is one of an estimated 5% of blind people in the UK
who've learned to use a form of echolocation.
Bye! Bye!
KERRIE CLICKS MOUTH
Just doing that just now, I can definitely pick up
a hedge there, or a tree.
It's a sparser sound and maybe bouncing back from a solid object.
It's quite open here at the moment.
She uses her stick to warn her what's on the ground just ahead,
and echolocation for obstacles in the wider environment.
KERRIE CLICKS
There's something there, which is probably a pole,
cos it's a good sharp sound that comes from it but it's quite thin.
Obviously, you don't get the echo for very long.
A car would be longer and lower,
so you can start to get a vague shape.
If I really want to hone in on something and I need to be
quite accurate, I'll start doing faster clicks.
KERRIE CLICKS FASTER
And that lamppost there is a good one that I've hit before
when I'm not concentrating on echolocation.
So it's a good one to try and hone in on with the clicks.
Back at the research lab, Laura is exploring how
echolocation compares to vision as a means of navigating.
She's kitting me out with motion capture technology.
So, Lucy, move your feet.
Move your shoulders. Yep, there you go.
That's you. Yeah...!
That is really cool!
I have to navigate round an obstacle course twice.
First, using echolocation...
..then with my eyes open.
Laura is now going to show me how my attempts compare with Kerrie's.
Kerrie did the same task as you did.
She actually...
..walks quite fast.
That's amazing.
She walks really fast and really confidently. Yes.
And not doing the same sort of shuffling and dithering
that I did. No.
Compared to when you walked with your eyes open, though,
when she started avoiding the obstacle is a bit later.
But in terms of, you know, how swiftly she actually moves...
..you know, we couldn't really tell.
Seriously impressive.
Laura's been investigating what it is that makes people
like Kerrie so skilful.
So, effectively, these people are using echolocation to see.
What's happening in the brain?
So, one thing we have done to get at this question is,
is to put people into an MRI scanner.
We found that people who are trained in echolocation,
they process echolocation sounds in a part that we refer to
as primary visual cortex.
So, it's the part of the brain that receives
direct input from the retinas.
So, you're saying that people who are using echolocation
are using their visual cortex in the same way that people
who have sight use to navigate?
So they... Or a similar way?
Yes, yeah.
That has blown my mind.
Seeing sound is something Kerrie has experienced.
When I was doing my training, I had a bit of an "Ah-ha" moment,
which was when I echolocated a flight of steps going up.
I felt like I saw the graduation of the steps going up in front of me.
So, that's interesting when something like that happens.
What's interesting for me is how far I can push myself
and how much I can do that I didn't think was possible.
Echolocation is a relatively new and rare skill for humans...
..but bats have had over 50 million years to perfect it.
Their mastery is most apparent when they hunt.
This pipistrelle, in total darkness,
is honing in on a tiny midge just a millimetre long.
Returning echoes allow the bat to pinpoint it,
and within a tenth of a second, the midge is doomed.
Back at Bryanston, our pups are just learning to echolocate.
Most bats make these calls through their mouth,
but the horseshoes actually use their nose.
The horseshoe-shaped folds of skin act as a megaphone
to boost the sound and give this bat its name.
But our pups' echolocation isn't yet good enough to hunt down insects.
For the next few weeks,
they'll continue to feed on their mother's milk.
Here, a large pup is suckling.
I've read that the lactating mothers,
they'll eat their lean body mass every night in insects.
Yeah, I mean, the thing is that they...
It's hugely demanding in terms of energy, the gestation period,
and then producing the milk, and making sure that those pups
are well fed and grow quickly.
So they really have to either take very large prey,
or consume, you know, huge numbers of smaller prey
to be able to produce the milk for the pups.
At the greater horseshoe roost, it's the moment we've been
waiting for - the maiden flight of many of the young pups.
First, they'll leave the protection of the attic roost.
Then, fly down into a large semi open space on the ground floor
for some final flight practice.
I'm going inside with specialist cameraman
and bat enthusiast Ian Baker.
Fantastic. So, we're in the old kitchen
Get that camera on.
And would you expect to see bats flying around now, Ian?
Probably another five minutes. Five minutes to go?
We've cut it a bit fine, but we're in position.
Here they come, pouring out.
This is the perfect place for us to observe the bats up close
before they leave the building.
BATS CHIRP
There seems to be little family groups that rotate
and circulate around and occasionally come together.
This behaviour we can study in great detail now,
and see things that we've never seen before.
Do you think that was a pup?
Yes. It looks like there's a piece of string
between the mum and the pup.
We've got two bats flying in close formation,
and the leading bat looks slightly larger.
This must be a mother teaching her pup how to fly.
Some pups are still very much learners.
Here, two young bats crash into each other.
Some bats refuse to come out when they're told to
and just hang at the exit.
Rebellious teenagers. Rebellious teenagers!
There's a lot of stuff for them to learn. Yeah.
Flight, echolocation, spatial memory.
And where to get the food. I mean, it's like their brain cells
are just firing and just growing. It's just amazing, isn't it? Yeah.
To think of, kind of, what's going on with these pups now.
Outside - Anita, Kate and Ajay are setting up
with detectors and clickers, ready to count the bats.
Ooh...! Oh! Ah!
We just had one fly out and fly straight back in.
There'll be quite a bit of that early on.
Oh, there's one...
There we go.
Uh, this is quite stressful.
This is amazing!
So, this is one of the first times that their babies are flying.
Whoa! Oh, my goodness.
Do you think they get a bit scared by being left,
and then they're trying their best to follow their mums out?
We can make assumptions if we see pairs of bats emerging together
and one of them appears to be a larger, more competent flyer.
How are you getting on? Oh, hey! Hey.
How many do you think have come out? Over 100, so far.
Over 100, yeah, wow. OK.
I just think it's such a thrilling thing to think that some of these
pups are flying for the first time.
Close to the roost, badgers, owls and foxes are on the hunt
for an easy meal, so it's crucial the pups don't crash land.
I just saw one come out and just circle around,
so that could be a training flight, couldn't it?
Could be...! Could be, could be, could be...!
A tree next to the building seems a favourite training ground.
Mothers and pups circle it continuously.
They're doing practice flights.
They're coming in, out, flying around the building,
flying around these trees, just in amongst the vegetation.
That bat there keeps doing circles around the tree,
and then goes off that way. Maybe it's going back in again.
That's what's so thrilling for me today to be here,
to see all of these bats sort of flooding out of this building.
You know, we live at a time with insect apocalypse
and environmental degradation, and it's such doom and gloom.
But this just really just lifts your spirits.
Before long, it's all quiet again.
The outpouring of bats is over for tonight.
It was quite frenetic there for a while.
It was fast, it was exciting.
I don't want to say it's the end, but it is, I think it's the end.
So, that's their first flight!
Wahey! Brilliant. I don't think they did too badly.
None of them crashed into us, so... No. They definitely didn't.
We've seen pups coming out and flexing their wings
and experimenting with flying in this space.
It's just totally thrilling, isn't it?
Yeah. It's a real privilege, actually, to be able to watch this.
Now the numbers have been gathered from our count here at the roost,
and from the detectors that will tell us about other bats
around Bryanston, it's time to find out the results.
First, the all important census of our greater horseshoe bats.
The final count was around 400 bats.
So well done on the clickers.
Yay! Very good.
And I think that feels like a positive result.
Yeah, it shows that the colony is continuing to increase here.
In the last 25 years, it's literally tripled in size
in terms of the adult bats in there.
That's around about 100 of this year's young that are already
leaving the roost in the evening,
which is really exciting to have observed that.
And it kind of reflects what's happening, nationally.
We're starting to see greater horseshoe bats make a comeback,
but it's really important to remember that that's
against a backdrop of a massive historical decline.
And so they're definitely not out of the woods.
Absolutely. But I can't help feel a little bit inspired
by the work that you've done here, because that is just a sort of
tremendous result, to feel that you're having this success here,
and I think I'm going to take some hope from it, for sure.
Kate's got some interesting news, too, from the detectors
we placed by the river and the clock tower.
We processed all the data from the AudioMoths,
and by the river there was about 12 species,
and up by the clock tower there's about ten.
So, you've got a really great population here
of different species.
Actually, one of the interesting things is that there are
loads of soprano pipistrelles around the clock tower.
There was a huge kind of dawn swarm.
So, that's where they're all circling around their roost
before they go back in and rest up for the day.
So, I think that, you know, that's really consistent
with a soprano pipistrelle roost, in the clock tower,
because of the timing of the activity that we're seeing.
Anita, what was it like seeing inside the roost with the cameras?
Having the opportunity to be able to see something
that you've not seen before, that's new to you,
despite the fact that you've been working around these animals
for a long time - it's been brilliant.
And as the technology becomes more available and more accessible,
more and more people can get involved and contribute data,
and it just becomes exponential, doesn't it?
We're going to learn a lot more about bats
in the next few years, I think. I hope so.
It's going to be the glory years, hopefully, for the bat.
Let's hope.