‘Spooky’ creatures just misunderstood, conservancy says

Bats, for example, are far from the vampiric bloodsuckers of fiction. Little brown bats, in fact, have the capacity to eat up to 600 mosquitoes in a single hour.

It’s Halloween, and many so-called “spooky” animals — from bats to spiders to ravens — often get a bad rap this time of year, but according to a director at the Nature Conservancy of Canada, some are actually helpful to humans … and some are in danger of going extinct.

Andrew Holland told 680 CJOB’s Connecting Winnipeg that the conservancy is working to help these not-so-creepy critters survive and dispel many of the myths that come up around Oct. 31 annually.

Bats, for example, are far from the vampiric bloodsuckers of fiction. Little brown bats, in fact — a threatened species — do valuable work, with the capacity to eat up to 600 mosquitoes in a single hour.

“(Bats) help farmers by keeping pests in check. They eat insects — they’re an insectivore,” Holland said.

“One of the big myths is that bats will drink human blood, that they’ll be chasing after us and drinking our blood, and that’s just not true.

“None of the eighteen bat species in Canada or any of the six bat species that are in Manitoba … none of them will drink your blood.”

Owls, also associated with frightening themes, are similarly misunderstood, he said.