Using Bats to Discover Entrances

[kdxn]

Has anyone done any work with respect to fitting Bats with GPS/SMS solutions inside a cave so that the position of their exit can be found out ?

http://www.telemetrysolutions.com/track-wildlife/gps-for-bat.php

Anyone doing such work would need to be compliant with bat handling regulations.

 

[Cave_Troll]

how do you get into the cave to tag the bats if you don't know where the entrance is?

 

[mrodoc]

It is highly relevant to our recent find. We are at least 400 feet below the surface and horizontally half a kilimetre or more from the nearest known entrance. However in one corner of a large chamber are piles of bat droppings, the odd dead bat and live bats have been seen. We would love to find with precision the exit they use.

 

[Ouan]

how do you get into the cave to tag the bats if you don't know where the entrance is?

Have come across large numbers of bats up 3 or 4 kilometres of streamway from the known entrance.
Would be useful to find out if they were using another entrance or actually flying that far every day.

 

[kdxn]

My original post was to do with finding out a different entrance from the one that was used by cavers.

Would be even more interesting if you could add an inertial chip to the GPS and then map the the cave passage that they use.

However do not want to load up the poor bats with too much to carry.
The current GPS technology may not be light enough for some of our smaller bat species.

 

[graham]

It is highly relevant to our recent find. We are at least 400 feet below the surface and horizontally half a kilimetre or more from the nearest known entrance. However in one corner of a large chamber are piles of bat droppings, the odd dead bat and live bats have been seen. We would love to find with precision the exit they use.

Pete you are no further from the surface than Bat Passage in GB, which was (amazingly) named after the bat skeletons found therein.

 

[mrodoc]

That's not the issue Graham. It's the fact that there is no evidence of bats from about TA on until you get to the Frozen Deep. There is also no evidence of them in Golgotha. Topless was sealed off from the entrance passages until the early 70's and there are heavily calcited bat bones in TFD as well as fairly freshly dead bats.

 

[graham]

That's not the issue Graham. It's the fact that there is no evidence of bats from about TA on until you get to the Frozen Deep. There is also no evidence of them in Golgotha. Topless was sealed off from the entrance passages until the early 70's and there are heavily calcited bat bones in TFD as well as fairly freshly dead bats.

Aye, and Ladder Dig was sealed until the sixties as well. I'd be interested in finding out whether your calcited bats are modern species or not. After Bat Passage was discovered, Bob Savage identified the bats as Plecotus austriacus, Plecotus Sp. intermediate in size between P. austriacus & P. auritus & Myotis bechsteini. He said that these species were common further south than the UK & might indicate a warmer climate than at present. (Page 70 here.) So it may be that the calcited in ones are actually quite old and the fresh ones exactly that. Is there enough to get an ID do you think?

 

[r_walklate@hotmail.com]

My misses has got bats coming out of her house, maybe I should stop travelling to go caving and look for a cave in her house, result!!!!!!