{"id":157497,"date":"2023-08-10T10:14:23","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T08:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=157497"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:26:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:26:53","slug":"the-tinbergen-building-is-one-enormous-bat-enclosure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2023\/08\/10\/the-tinbergen-building-is-one-enormous-bat-enclosure\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tinbergen building is one enormous bat enclosure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The signs are hard to spot during the day \u2013 an animal that fits into a matchbox could never leave large droppings. But the windows of the Tinbergen building are covered in tell-tale chocolate sprinkles: the droppings of the pipistrelle bat.<\/p>\n

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The close-up makes the pipistrelle bat look like a lot. Yet it is so small it can fit in a matchbox.<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUnsplash Denley Photography<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Although seventeen of the Tinbergen building\u2019s nineteen storeys are off-limits to students, they are<\/em> open to bats. All bats are protected in the Netherlands, including the not-particularly-rare pipistrelle bat. Tinbergen is their favourite building on Woudestein campus.<\/p>\n

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You sometimes have to look carefully, but once you see the first 'sprinkle' you soon see many more. This is on the window of the 17th floor of the Tinbergen Building.<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRonald van den Heerik<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

\u201cTheir droppings are the size of a chocolate sprinkle\u201d, says ecologist Garry Bakker from the Rotterdam Urban Ecology Unit, with his nose pressed against the window of the abandoned Faculty Club on the seventeenth storey. \u201cIt\u2019s a small, brittle dropping that sometimes glints with chitin from the wings of mosquitoes \u2013 a favourite morsel in the diet of the common pipistrelle bat.\u201d Once you\u2019ve spotted the first miniature dropping, the windows of the Tinbergen building suddenly prove to be full of them. The animals themselves are a little harder to find, though they can be seen flying over the lake by the pavilion at night. \u201cThey are easier to spot using a thermal imaging viewer. Pipistrelle bats swarm around all floors of the building. The whole building is one enormous bat enclosure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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