Fairy Bats
And Faux Fire Pitcher Plants
Maev could just make out a half dozen creatures darting to and fro above the cluster of glowing pitcher plants. With the Emperor Moon 's light reflecting off their tiny white bodies, it seemed they too glimmered. It was as if tiny pixies were dancing for her pleasure. Slowly, she crept forward to see them better. To her surprise, her fairies turned out to be diminutive bats swooping to catch the bugs drawn in by the plant's light.
I find it hard to get excited about bogs. They smell, they are mucky, and they are full of pitfalls. However, they do hide a few treasures. Fairy bats and their pitcher plant homes are one of them.
While it looks like a flower, the pitcher is actually a highly specialized leaf. It forms a tube with two glands at the base and a projection at the top that the tiny bat hangs on during the day. As the sun sets, the glands produce chemicals that make the pitcher glow. This draws in flying insects like flies, moths and even a mosquito or two. Then bam! Our little aerial acrobat scarfs them up.
Now you may be wondering why a plant is feeding a bat. Bogs don't produce rich soil like you find in a farmer's field. So this bog flower found a clever workaround. Once the bat eats its fill of insects, it tucks itself back into the pitcher. The bat digests its buggy supper. Later, when nature takes its course, the poo drops into the chemical soup at the base of the plant. There it turns it into the minerals that other plants get from soil. It's a brilliant solution.
Basic Information
Anatomy
If you can get past your natural squeamishness, these guys are rather cute. The fairy bat is as long from head to the base of its tail as a woman's hand is wide. However, their wing span is about the length of a woman's forearm. Unlike the hideous visages of so many of their kind, these bats' faces look similar to very, very tiny dogs. Their ears are much larger and their eyes much smaller in proportion to their heads' size.
The pitcher plants provide fairy bats with camouflage for the eyes and noses of their predators. Having pitchers that are mostly white, the plants match the tiny bats' white fur and wings. Dots of pink the same color as the rest of the bats' skin complete the disguise. To fool animals' noses as well as entice bugs, the pitcher plants produce a strong, sweet over-ripe fruit sent. The sleeping bats are almost impossible to find during the day. Only at night, can they be spotted with ease.
Biological Cycle
Obviously, fairy bats can't live in their pitcher plants all year; the fens freeze, after all. The plant fruits at the beginning of Dowager season. After drying out for a month, the seeds fall. The pitchers die by the first frost.
That's when these little white critters look for a new home. They find a small, tight space such as a hollow tree or a deep rock crevice to hibernate. They share these spaces with about a hundred of their friends, all returning to the same roost again and again. This helps them endure the cold to come. When the warm weather of Maiden arrives, the bats will begin searching for new pitcher plant homes.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
As noted above, the bats' eyes are tiny compared to their head. They neither can tolerate bright lights nor see well in daylight. However, they can fly flawlessly through complex mazes without any light. According to a natural philosopher I consulted, bats such as these can hear how echoes bounce between objects and use that to fly by. Even more remarkable, they can use these faint echoes to catch insects in mid-flight in total darkness.
I loved this. I love bats. Keep writing I am going to be following your work now.