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Twilight zone: follow a scientist as she searches the skies to investigate one of nighttime's fliers--bats.

Article Excerpt
The sun is setting in the rain forest of French Guiana (gee-AH-nah), a country in northern South America. Nancy Simmons, a zoologist at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, hikes along a trail through the trees. She spreads out a large net and strings it between two poles like a volleyball net. She lodges the poles into the ground. Then, she waits.

As evening falls, some of the forest's night fliers--bats--emerge from their sleeping roosts. As they swoop past Simmons--THWAP!--a few of the bats collide with her net and get snarled in its threads. Simmons works through the night, carefully untangling the bats. She examines each one before setting it aside in a cotton bag. At the end of the night, she decides which bats to release and which to take to her camp for further study.

By setting up nets all around a small patch of rain forest, Simmons has captured 78 different species of bats. That's the highest number of bat species ever found in one place.

But French Guiana isn't the only region of the world teeming with bats. The animals are found on every continent except Antarctica. Bats account for nearly one fifth of all of Earth's species of mammals (see Nuts & Bolts, p. 11).

With so many bats flying in skies all over the world, scientists are trying to learn how each of the different species is...

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