in 2019<\/a>. \u2014 Sara Wilbur<\/p>\nThere really could be bats in your belfry this Halloween, or it turns out, they may be snuggled up in your woodpile. After talking to researchers and other bat fans, I learned that bats may hang out in Interior Alaska all winter.<\/p>\n
Myotis lucifugus, also known as the little brown bat, is one of six different species that live in Alaska and the only bat seen with any regularity in the Interior. In the Lower 48, they typically migrate from wet, buggy feeding grounds in the summer to a moist cave for hibernating in winter. Up here, biologists such as Brian Lawhead of Alaska Biological Research in Fairbanks have found that the bats prefer similar feeding grounds, but where they spend the winter hibernating is a mystery.<\/p>\n
Keith Price, a Salcha homesteader, has had many close encounters with little brown bats. Each summer for about the past 30 years, the bats have set up a maternity colony \u2014 where bats give birth to and raise their young \u2014 in one of his potato barns.<\/p>\n
Although it\u2019s not unheard of to see bats in the Interior, biologists say Price\u2019s barn is the farthest north bat nursery colony in the United States. What\u2019s even more remarkable is that bats have overwintered on his homestead.<\/p>\n
Price once propped up a ladder and gently brought a dormant bat inside his house. The bat slowly awakened with twitches and snarls. \u201cThey\u2019re real interesting little guys,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t relate to them until you see their face. They\u2019re really wicked \u2014 mostly teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for the potential spookiness of this column, the little brown bats are gentle, and they don\u2019t drink blood. An Indiana biologist recently collected about 100 bat pellets from Price\u2019s barn and found out that the bulkiest ingredient was moth (71% of pellet volume), with a surprisingly high proportion of spider (16.8%) and a trace of mosquito (1.8%). Lawhead theorizes that the bats need to make their meals count by taking larger prey because Interior Alaska\u2019s 22 hours of summer daylight limit the bats\u2019 hunting time to two-and-a-half to three hours. In darker climates, the same bats often get to hunt twice a night with a rest period in between.<\/p>\n
The real bat mystery begins in September, when the bats start to disappear. Lawhead said little brown bats in the Lower 48 have been known to migrate up to 200 miles. \u201cNo one really knows where these bats winter,\u201d Lawhead said of the Interior bats. \u201cWhatever they\u2019re doing, they\u2019re doing it different than they\u2019re doing it down south.\u201d<\/p>\n
He speculates that they might actually migrate to coastal Alaska or northwestern Canada, but he has a hard time visualizing them flying through mountain passes. Another possibility is that the bats find caves where it\u2019s moist enough to keep their bodies from drying out, which could be a bigger problem in the Interior than cold temperatures. But to Lawhead\u2019s knowledge, no one has found a bat cave in Interior Alaska yet.<\/p>\n
In May, a woman in Nenana reported that a bat fell from a piece of firewood she was carrying. She said the bat warmed up and flew away after the rude awakening. Lawhead thinks this might be another example of where bats spend the winter in Interior Alaska.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey might overwinter in areas under the snow,\u201d he said, such as under a loose piece of tree bark to take advantage of the snow\u2019s blanketing effect.<\/p>\n
Rotten logs or tree cavities might also provide a safe haven because they would be moist enough to keep the membranous creatures alive during their seven-month slumber. Lawhead said some bats prefer an environment so wet that they are covered with water droplets as they hibernate.<\/p>\n
Since I don\u2019t have a belfry, I\u2019ll go check the shower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marian Snively holds a little brown bat caught in Delta Junction. (Alaska Department of Fish and Game) Note:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-901651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/PE4MRAOZEFCSLD7FP45BW3QK4U.jpg\")
Marian Snively holds a little brown bat caught in Delta Junction. (Alaska Department of Fish and Game) <\/p>\n