Breakfast with a baby bat
IT'S not the first thing you expect to find in your kitchen sink of a morning, but Julie Lewin sure was surprised to find a micro bat among her cups and saucers.
"It was such a surprise, at first I thought it was a toad, and then I realized it was furry and had ears ... and it was a small bat," she said.
"I wondered how it got there.
"At first I thought it might have been inside one of my home grown lettuces and fallen into the sink when I washed it," she said.
So how common is it for people to find bats in their home?
Bat Conservation and Rescue Queensland's president Louise Saunders said it was extremely common for micro bats to be found in odd places.
"What most commonly happens is they fly in without people knowing and end up in the sink or shower because they are looking for a drink.
"People shouldn't be worried finding these bats in their home, in fact they're fantastic," she said.
"Micro bats eat all the pests around your home, such as mosquitos, cockroaches, flying termites, lawn grub moths, beetles, midges, and even grain weevils."
Ms Saunders said there was a major difference between a flying fox and a micro bat in that flying foxes were nectar eating animals and micro bats ate insects.
"One small micro bat can eat up to 12,000 mozzies, whereas flying foxes will eat your fruit.
"But people need to be careful when covering fruit with nets, because they can get tangled in them, harming the flying fox."
Gone batty
Micro bats are in the family of Microchiroptera, meaning "little hand-wing".
They are warm-blooded placental animals; covered with fur.
The young are nourished with milk produced by the mothers.
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