Alberta has the bighorn sheep. Manitoba has the plains bison. Yukon has the raven. So what’s Ontario’s official animal?
We don’t have one — yet.
The loon is our official bird, but we can’t help but think that Ontario’s other furry and feathery (and slippery and leathery) denizens haven’t been given a chance to compete.
That’s why, over the next eight weeks, TVO.org will be giving 16 Ontario animals their turn in the spotlight. You’ll learn about how they live, what threats they’re facing, and how they reflect the province’s character. At the end of the series, you’ll get the chance to make your voice heard — and to vote for your favourite critter.
The winner may not end up on a flag or a coat of arms. But they’ll get a fancy title: Ontario’s unofficial official animal.
Click here for complete voting information, including matchup schedules.
Illustration by Ernest Seton Thompson from Four-footed Americans and Their Kin, 1898. (Wikimedia)
Species/scientific name: Myotis lucifugus
Adult size: Four to five centimetres long, with a wingspan of up to 27 centimetres
Adult weight: Up to 14 grams
Longevity: Can live for more than 30 years
Feeding and diet: Mostly insects, such as mosquitos
Predators: It has few natural predators but may be killed by raptors, such as owls
Threats: Fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, wind turbines, habitat loss
Habitat: Roosts in buildings, tree hollows, and caves and hibernates in caves and mines
Range: Widespread in southern Ontario and found as far north as Moose Factory and Favourable Lake.
Conservation status in Ontario: Provincially protected under the Endangered Species Act and federally protected under the Species at Risk Act. The species has suffered significant population decline over the past decade years since the arrival of white-nose syndrome.
(eZeePics Studio/iStock)
On a warm, dry night, go to Toronto’s High Park or to one of several other local or provincial parks throughout Ontario, and find someone who works there. Ask them whether you can borrow a bat detector (maybe do some research first to make sure they have them). Go out at twilight, when bats are active and just enough light remains so that you can make out their silhouettes against the summer sky. Then listen.
If you’re in a city, especially in southern Ontario, your detector has likely recorded the chatter of the big brown bat — when slowed down, it becomes the unmistakable echo of soundwaves bouncing off the trees.
In rural Ontario and especially in the north, you’re more likely to come across the little brown bat. Weighing between four and 14 grams, the glossy little brown is the big brown’s smaller — and in our estimation, cuter — cousin.
Endangered Ontario: Little brown bat
The little brown is one of eight species of bat in Ontario. “There are a lot of misconceptions about bats: ‘Oh, they're going to fly into my hair.’ ‘They have awful eyesight.’ All these things that just aren't true because people don't really know them and probably haven't seen one up close,” says Ontario Nature’s Smera Sukumar. “But once you do, you see that they're just little furry mammals that have the incredible ability to fly.”
The little brown feeds primarily on insects and is excellent at controlling mosquito populations, often eating more than its body weight in bugs before sunrise. “They're a little bit feisty in your hands,” Sukumar says. “They have a bit of spunk.” Unlike other bat species, they are social, roosting together and often huddling for warmth during winter hibernation.
This species of Ontario’s only flying mammal is born unusually large, roughly 25 per cent of the mother’s weight at birth — imagine an 18-kilogram human baby. “The males are not models of fatherhood,” says Brock Fenton of Western University. “I think they're just sperm banks.”
Monitoring bats in Toronto and region
Little browns are also unusually long-lived, with some making it well into their thirties. “That’s just astonishing,” Fenton says. “It’s always fun to take students out to where we’ve been banding bats, and the bats are older than they are.”
In those years, they travel great distances: hundreds of kilometres often separate their summer roosts from their winter homes.
Little brown bats are also under threat and are classified as an endangered species. Habitat loss and wind turbines put the species at increased risk, and a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome is killing them in droves. “There was a study by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry that observed declines of more than 90 per cent for the little brown bat since white-nose syndrome was first detected here,” Sukumar says.
At birth, a little brown bat is roughly 25 per cent of its mother’s weight.
Since the start of this decade, few animals have suffered more hits to their reputation. But Sukumar says their newfound pandemic fame makes them essential — and makes white-nose syndrome especially confounding. “They are really great study animals to learn how to fight and combat all these viruses that are growing in them and why they have such great immune systems in general. And then the flip-side of that is: How is this one fungus just decimating these populations?”
Hinterland Who's Who: Little brown bat
Losing little-brown populations is a tragedy for many reasons, not the least of which is that there’s still so much about them that we don’t know, Sukumar says: “They're kind of shrouded in mystery.”
For example, some researchers believe we’ve long underestimated the cognitive abilities of bats. A study of Egyptian fruit bats in Tel Aviv suggests that bats create mental maps of their surroundings. “Things that you just would have loved to know, and you would have just thought you were dreaming — now all of a sudden there's even evidence for it,” Fenton says. “They’re the gift that keeps on giving.
According to Sukumar, the reason a bat should be Ontario’s official animal is even simpler: “They’re really cool,” she says. “I mean, they're the only mammal we have that can fly ... that gives them a lot of cool points.”
This series is produced with the assistance of Ontario Nature.
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