Bat Night brings wildlife education to Logan

With a crash course on bats, trivia and a costume contest, Bat Night, held at Stokes Nature Center on Oct. 28, drew people of all ages. 

Maddie Hovinga, a junior studying journalism, social media and public relations with an emphasis in science communication, said she expected a much smaller crowd. 

“I kind of thought I would be the only one there, and I was a little nervous,” Hovinga said, “but when I came around that corner in the canyon, I saw a lot of cars lined up. I was like, ‘Wow, I’m glad I’m not the only one here.'” 

Hovinga found the event on the library’s website while looking for science events for a class assignment. She said she hadn’t heard of Stokes Nature Center before. 

“Honestly, there’s some really great outreach programs that go on within the Logan or the Cache Valley area,” Hovinga said. 

The night opened with a round of trivia called “Bat or BS,” where attendees raised their hands to guess whether statements about bats were true or false.  

The facts started with the basics: Bats are mammals, not egg-layers like birds. They have existed for more than 50 million years, and there are more than 1,000 species worldwide. They use echolocation to find their way and their food in the dark, and they are the only mammals capable of true sustained flight. Flying squirrels, despite the name, only glide. 

Other facts took on bats’ scarier reputation: Only three species drink blood, while the rest eat fruit, insects or nectar. Some nectar-feeding bats pollinate flowers the way hummingbirds do. Bats can carry rabies, but so can most mammals, and most bats are not infected. 

According to the trivia event, bats also pull their weight economically. They provide an estimated $23 billion a year in pest control to U.S. agriculture by eating insects that would otherwise damage crops. 

The last round focused on Utah: All the state’s native bat species eat insects or other arthropods. Pallid bats hunt scorpions on the ground and are resistant to their venom. Townsend’s big-eared bats use their oversized ears to hunt, and Mexican free-tailed bats get their name from a tail that extends past the membrane between their legs. 

After the trivia, a biologist from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources gave a presentation on Utah’s bats and the research the state is doing to protect them. 

Kate Hunter, director of education at Stokes Nature Center, said the event came together after she reached out last year. Hunter had worked with USU’s Berryman Institute on a summer speaker series, which helped shape the idea. Stokes Nature Center helped coordinate the night. 

Stokes Nature Center is a nonprofit that runs nature education programs in Logan Canyon. 

“Our goal is just nature education for all,” Hunter said. “We try to enact that by keeping nature education low cost or free as much as we can for events like this.” 

Paid events, donors and grants help keep the rest of its programming affordable, Hunter said. 

In the summer, Stokes Nature Center hosts a speaker series about twice a month on Saturdays at 11 a.m. In the colder months, it runs one-off events like Bat Night, which it has hosted a few times before, and hummingbird feeding nights. It also holds Nature Tales, a story and craft time every Friday at 11 a.m. 

Taina McLeod, a One Utah Service Fellow with AmeriCorps from Hampton, Virginia, works with the school classes and homeschool groups that visit Stokes. She said seeing the range of kids who come through is a highlight. 

“Some kids will say, ‘I’ve never been in the canyon before,’ even though they’ve lived here for years,” McLeod said. “Other kids will just be like, ‘Oh, I come here fishing every weekend with my parents.'” 

Events like Bat Night give her a chance to learn alongside visitors. 

“I do love just being able to kind of be the student,” McLeod said, “but I also like sharing. I’m also a very excitable person, so I also like sharing my excitement with the youth and their parents or teachers.” 

The night ended with a costume contest, with the winner picked by audience applause. 

For Hovinga, the evening was a reminder of how much there is to learn close to home. 

“I had no idea about bats,” Hovinga said. “I think in Utah, and specifically in Cache Valley, there’s a lot to be learned about wildlife and the ecosystem that we have around here.”