The children’s story “Batty and Pitty” is based on our research about the mutualistic relationship between the bat species Kerivoula hardwickii hardwickii and the carnivorous pitcher plant Nepenthes hemsleyana. Both species can be found on Borneo. The relationship between the bat and the plants is a symbiosis: the bats have a safe place where they can sleep, the plants can use the faeces from the bats as fertilizer and thus do not have to catch so many insects to gain nutrients.
Although our study on the bat – pitcher plant – interaction is far from being finished the children story is mainly based on our researches that we conducted between June and July 2009 and have been published under the title:
Grafe, T. U., C. R. Schöner, A. Junaidi, G. Kerth & M. G. Schöner (2011): A novel resource-service mutualism between bats and pitcher plants. Biology Letters 7: 436-439.
The idea and the text are from Caroline and Michael Schöner, the drawings have been done by Claudia Spitzkopf and Robin Schöfer, a twelve year old girl who was totally fascinated by this story. We also like to thank Tigga who kindly reviewed the story. Of course, you are all invited to use our story in order to familiarize children with the fascinating world of bats. However, we want to remind everyone that interactions like this are fragile. The bats and the pitcher plants occur in highly threatened peat swamp forests which are often converted e.g. into palm oil plantations. With stories like this we hope to increase the awareness of future generations that the diversity of our world is rich but also endangered.
Note from Tigga:
“Pitty and Batty” can be downloaded from the Brunei Outreach Materials Page; meanwhile, below are some of the wonderful illustrations as a taster.
Caroline and Michael are working with colleagues to translate this into Malay. If anyone would like to translate into another language we’d love to hear from you.
