Going Batty Where Most Go Barmy

There's no question that British English is not American English. Where Yanks would say a person went batty, Brits would say that person went barmy. This is a shame, because it has almost completely ruined my update about bats outside the belfry in rural Devon, England. It seems, just recently, that rare Bechstein's bats have been discovered on Dartmoor. The way they were discovered makes the age-old British pastime of "birding" look very inconsequential indeed. It seems a PhD student from Bristol University, about an hour from Dartmoor, set up his equipment in the Bovey and Dart valleys. That equipment included acoustic lures that play back the bats' calls and attract them into a net. That might pretty much lay to rest such possibilities as bats knowing each other's calls. I mean, why would an animal answer its own voice...unless, of course, they had recording devices of their own and, like humans, were quite used to their own voices speaking to them, and simply toddled along to see who might be playing their latest voice mail. Or, for instance, suppose Mr. Batt has installed an answering machine, and thought perhaps he was checking it, bats not being among the more intelligent species, like pigs. "Good evening. This is Benjamin Batt...that's with two Ts, please...speaking. But I'm out at the moment catching my dinner, or my death of cold. I do live in England, after all. In any case, please leave your message, and I'll emit some inaudible sounds later which, if you are a bat, too, you will hear. Otherwise, if you are of some other species, just hang up."

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I would think spending 25 thousand pounds on luring bats was excessive. Or maybe not. After all, finding the Bechstein's Bat was a bonus. (Good headline: Bernie's Bat Brings in a Bonus for Bristol Bat-Boy...but I digress.) In any case, the research was supported by grants from the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA), the Woodland Trust, and the National Trust to find out the ecology of the Barbastelle bat. There are supposed to be more of them than Bechsteins, 5,000 to a mere 1,500. According to an article on teh BBC website, "Both species of bat roost under peeling bark and in splits and holes in damaged and dead trees." It seems to me quite a lot is already known about bat ecology, at least for the two British "B" bats. I'm assuming they both catch moths, mosquitoes and beetles, although the article only noted that the Bechstein's diet consists of those tasty bits.