I wanted to create some bat jewelry that was aesthetic, perfect for the lover of these amazing animals.
My bat designs were based on the horseshoe bat – they have such interesting faces and beautiful wings. Greater horseshoe bats are native to Europe and Asia. They are, like many other bat species, unfortunately endangered. Just a century ago there were colonies in Britain that had several thousand bats each. Now the total population is about 2,000 bats there.
I didn’t realize this, but in my bat research I found out that nearly ¼ of all mammalian species belong to the Chiroptera, or the bat order! There are 951 species of bats. They range in size from a weight of 0.05 oz. and a 6 inch wingspan in Kitti’s hog-nosed bat to 3.3 lb. and 6.5 ft wing span in flying foxes.
There are no blind bats, despite the old saying, but a lot of them don’t use their eyes for locating prey. They use echolocation, a way of bouncing high pitched sounds off of objects then listening for the echoes that bounce back. Different species of bats have different sounding beeps- not that we would notice because the sounds are beyond our range of hearing.
Bats, as most people know, are the only mammal that can truly fly. There are some gliding mammals that can soar from tree to tree, but it just isn’t the same thing!
I’m planning to add new bat designs as time goes by, but meanwhile I hope you enjoy my little horseshoe bat jewelry. |
