Darkness, fog and mysterious noises: While many of us celebrate Halloween this Friday, the true creatures of the night are awakening outside. Spiders, owls and bats use the darkness as a place to hunt and retreat – and even cemeteries offer them important habitats all year round.
Many animals are nocturnal and have developed amazing adaptations to survive in the dark. Owls hunt silently and can locate prey in three dimensions thanks to their fine ears, while bats navigate through the darkness using echolocation. Small mammals such as mice and rats are also particularly active at night. For them, the darkness is not a scary moment, but a living space.
The silent hunters
Owls are perfect examples of nocturnal adaptations. Their eyes reflect moonlight and allow them to see well even in the dark. The arrangement of feathers on the owl’s wings dampens the flight noise to below two kilohertz – barely audible to humans and prey. At the same time, owls can locate sounds in three dimensions, meaning they not only recognize the direction but also the height of a sound. This means they can find mice and rats even in complete darkness. Now in autumn, however, some species neglect their otherwise silent hunting in order to attract attention with calls during courtship. The tawny owl is particularly striking: its melancholic “Huh-huhuhuhuuu” echoes through the forests and can send a shiver down the spines of walkers. Although this has given him a reputation as a harbinger of death, he is actually a fascinating hunter with finely tuned senses.
The owls’ prey animals also show amazing strategies: a recent study at Lüneburg’s Kalkberg documented that rats prey on bats at night. “The rats lurk between crevices in the rocks in front of the bats’ entry and exit corridors and attack quickly as soon as a bat passes through the opening,” reports Julia-Marie Battermann from the German Wildlife Foundation. Our native bats, on the other hand, are insect hunters and completely peaceful – so their Halloween reputation as bloodthirsty night creatures is wrong. In the coming weeks they will retreat to cool niches and caves to hibernate.
Cemeteries as a refuge
But it’s not just the darkness in which nocturnal animals roam that scares us, but also many of the places where they spend their time. Seemingly spooky places such as the vaults of chapels and churches as well as cemeteries offer the nocturnal animals protection, peace and sources of food. Even in the middle of the city, cemeteries are usually deserted at night, making them a valuable refuge, especially for nocturnal city animals. In cemeteries, owls often find old trees with caves for breeding and hiding. Spiders retreat to leafy, frost-free areas between gravestones.
A cemetery may be a place that gives people goosebumps, but for wild animals it is an important retreat all year round. “If you want to do something good for wild animals, plant graves in a natural way,” advises Battermann. Native plants such as ivy, cranesbill, thyme or sedum are robust, attract insects and provide food for nocturnal animals – not just on Halloween.
Source: German Wildlife Foundation