Preface to Benny, The Big Brown Bat

Preface

Benny, the Big Brown Bat is based on the work of Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell, a physician who designed the first bat house. Dr. Campbell wanted to find a way to control malaria, a disease that caused millions of deaths throughout the world each year. He felt he could do this by concentrating bats, the natural predators of mosquitoes, in areas of concern. As a resident, and former city bacteriologist of San Antonio, Texas, he chose Mitchell's Lake for his malaria-eradicating project. Campbell wrote, "No swamp in the low lands could be worse. All of the city's sewage flowed into the lake and seepage ponds created perfect mosquito breeding conditions."

Concurrently, other southern cities were using a method of mosquito control developed by Ronald Ross, the British surgeon who identified the Anopheles mosquito as the carrier of malaria. His control methods included soil drainage, oiling stagnant ponds, screening buildings, regular use of mosquito nets over beds, and the isolation of infected patients. Nevertheless, Dr. Campbell appeared to be having success with his less costly, bat concentration method; so much so, that the Texas State Board of Health endorsed Campbell's work. It became a misdemeanor to kill bats within the State of Texas. In the mid-1950's, however, hysteria over rabies caused bats to be removed from the State's protected species list.

Dr. Campbell detailed his malaria-eradicating claims in his 1925 book, Bats, Mosquitoes, and Dollars ( Stratford Company, Boston, MA), in spite of the fact that in 1919, Tracy I. Storer, a biologist, collected guano from the Mitchell Lake bat tower for entomological examination. No fragments of mosquitoes could be found. Storer concluded that, ". . . the bats in the San Antonio roosts were not feeding upon mosquitoes at the time when the above-mentioned samples were taken. Nor is Theirs any evidence to show that this species elsewhere feeds upon mosquitoes" (1926, Bats, bat towers and mosquitoes, J. Mammal., 7:85-90).

The true success of Dr. Campbell's claims can no longer be tested. The bat roost and the original mosquito breeding conditions are gone. Nevertheless, malaria did disappear from the San Antonio area during the time of Dr. Campbell's work.

Although bats have not been conclusively linked to the control of mosquitoes, they are the major predators of nocturnal flying insects. Literally, bats consume tons of injurious moths, beetles, and other harmful insects nightly. Studies have also shown that many insects avoid areas where bats congregate. Having bats as neighbors is a safe, effective, and completely natural method of insect control. And, wherever bats concentrate, nature's best fertilizer is available for gardens.

Susan M. Barnard
Executive Director
Basically Bats, Inc.

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