This is an excellent follow-up activity to an Aurora lesson titled "Why are Bats Important to Our Community?" We will develop an appreciation of bats and an understanding of their hunting techniques and locations. This will involve an activity in which a blindfolded child will pretend to be a bat using "echolocation" to search for his/her classmates. The classmates will pretend to be the "insects."
Was the bat able to locate the insects easily?
What happened as the insects became fewer and fewer?
Explain how this activity is similar to how real bats find their prey.
What would make it easier or harder for the bat to find its prey?
Given time and location data, students will create a graph that shows the amount of time necessary for a "bat" to find "insects" in various locations.
Given information about bats and their hunting methods, students will explain how bats use echolocation to capture insects.
1 Blindfold
The "bat" needs to be blindfolded
A gym or area the size of a gym
A gym is easiest to use, but any "gym sized" area will work. The teacher will need to set boundries in some way, if not using a gym.
Stop Watch
For lower grades the teacher should keep the stop watch.
Older students could time the event.
Stellaluna Bat Resources
This web site is by Cherrol McGhee of the Hillview State School in Australia. It has extensive resources on bats.
Bat Echolocation and Bat Detectors
This site, maintained by Bill Gerosa; Convergence Technologies, Inc.; 19 Tioga Lane; Pleasantville, NY 10570, has information on bats and materials that can be ordered.
Jaguar Paw Jungle Resort web site
Scroll down to do a search for "bat." After scrolling down the page again, one may find some interesting links, many of which have strict copyright laws.
A students is chosen to be the "bat," and then he or she is blindfolded.
If you have not been chosen as the bat, you are an insect.
All insects will spread out around the area designated, staying within the boundaries set by your teacher.
The Bat should call out "BEEP, BEEP."
All insects should respond to the bat's "BEEP, BEEP" by responding with "BUZZ, BUZZ" as they walk around the area.
If you have been assigned to start the stop watch, do so as soon as your teacher says to begin.
The bat continues to beep and the insects continue to buzz while changing position.
The bat tries to tag an "insect" by listening for the sound they make and moving in the direction of the sound.
A tagged insect must go sit in the "bat cave" until the next round.
When all but one insect has been sent to the bat cave, stop the stop watch and record on this data sheet (printed out) the bat's name and time taken to catch insects.
The last tagged insect becomes the new bat.
Repeat the procedures as many times as you like.
Share the results of your bat experiment with students in other communities. Your teacher may assist you with this task.
At the end of the complete round, after everyone has been the "bat," students should create a graph/data table. The teacher may help on this. Students and/or the teacher may use this rubric as a checklist of skills met.
Students should answer the questions found in the Teacher's Guide.
Information About Echolocation:
Though a bat's eyesite is pretty good, many have the added skill of echolocation. Like a dolphin's sonar, a bat will let out high pitched pulsing sounds from its mouth or nose. The sound bounces off of obstacles and food and echoes back to the bat giving them information about the size, shape, identity and direction of flight of the object. As a bat zeroes in on the pray, the echo pulses increase and the hunt is refined. Using echolocation, a bat can locate food as thin as a human hair.
An excellent lead in to this activity would be the reading of the book Stellaluna which is available in most elementary and public libraries. Even older kids like to be read to.
Duration: Students should be given two days to complete the activity. One day should be for the activity and data collection, the other for organizing the data into tables and graphs.
Information About Echolocation:
Though a bat's eyesite is pretty good, many have the added skill of echolocation. Like a dolphin's sonar, a bat will let out high pitched pulsing sounds from its mouth or nose. The sound bounces off of obstacles and food and echoes back to the bat giving them information about the size, shape, identity and direction of flight of the object. As a bat zeroes in on the pray, the echo pulses increase and the hunt is refined. Using echolocation, a bat can locate food as thin as a human hair.
Information About Echolocation:
Though a bat's eyesite is pretty good, many have the added skill of echolocation. Like a dolphin's sonar, a bat will let out high pitched pulsing sounds from its mouth or nose. The sound bounces off of obstacles and food and echoes back to the bat giving them information about the size, shape, identity and direction of flight of the object. As a bat zeroes in on the pray, the echo pulses increase and the hunt is refined. Using echolocation, a bat can locate food as thin as a human hair.
An excellent lead in to this activity would be the reading of the book Stellaluna which is available in most elementary and public libraries. Even older kids like to be read to.
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