>>> First-year student Madeleine Rowan's dorm room decorations proclaim her deep scientific interest in bats. Despite the location of her stuffed bat, she says real bats don't attack humans' hair.
>>> First-year student Madeleine Rowan's dorm room decorations proclaim
her deep scientific interest in bats. Despite the location of her stuffed
bat, she says real bats don't attack humans' hair.
Most people would agree with poet Shel Silverstein's opinion of bats: "Bats are creepy, bats are scary, bats do not seem sanitary ... " But Madeleine Rowan '00 couldn't disagree more. "They're cute, timid, and pretty harmless," she says. She should know--she's spent three summers scientifically studying the nocturnal mammals.
Rowan was looking for a way to do hands-on scientific research when a teacher told her about a colleague who led students on bat research expeditions. Although initially interested in marine biology, Rowan jumped at the chance and started hanging out with bats instead.
Working five days a week with a research team, Rowan stalked bats under bridges in her home state of Oregon's forests. When they found a clump of bats, she'd use a "cluster buster" contraption to remove each bat from its roost into a bag. Then she'd note its weight, size, sex, and roosting location before releasing it. "There's so little research on bats that any data is an important contribution to our overall knowledge," Rowan says.
She calls the research "the most exciting thing I've ever done. I feel that I'm participating in something with a greater purpose behind it. And I've taken so much from the experience that I can use in the future." Not surprisingly, Rowan plans to major in biological sciences and hopes to become a research biologist.
Reaching into a bag of bats doesn't bother her, though she says it is "kind of funny to feel all those warm fuzzy things," and admits to a twinge of worry "that there might be a big brown bat who can chomp on your finger and draw blood." Although the largest bats have a six-foot wing span, most are about six inches across with mouths too small to bite a human finger, she says. "With their wings folded, they're smaller than mice." And apparently they grow on you. "At first I just liked working as part of a team and seeing the whole scientific research process. But bats are really cute, and you can tell the personalities of different species." Rowan's favorites are long-eared bats, which she says "look like teddy bears."
Rowan's already sought Massachusetts bats under the bridge near Lower Lake. But so far, the only bats she's spotted on campus are the stuffed bat, hanging rubber "vampire" bat, and the one in the poster in her dorm room.
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