How to Build a Better Bat Cave
In the winter of 1975, a biologist named Merlin Tuttle bought himself a state-of-the-art digital thermometer and set out on a road trip from Wisconsin down to Florida. Tuttle, who was in his mid-30s and sporting a brown, push-broom mustache, was trying to measure something that no one had really measured before. He wanted to know the precise attributes that turned a hole in the ground into a winter home for bats.
The six months of winter in the Northeastern United States are life-or-death for cave-dwelling bats: Their usual food source, bugs, are too scarce to sustain them, and they must find a suitable roost
