Summit County Metro Parks biologist Marlo Perdicas offers a tip on how to recognize the Indiana bat at today’s Bio Blitz. It’s not very hairy — unlike its more ubiquitous cousin, the Little Brown bat, which “has long, very bushy toe hair,” he says. “The Indiana bat has very short and sparse toe hair.”

Yeah, like we’re gonna get close enough to measure. But that’s exactly what Perdicas expects from volunteers, as they search for plant and animal species never spotted in Akron before. “When you spend time in a natural area that you haven’t scoured before, you’ll find something new that you didn’t know was there,” he says. Perdicas asks volunteers to take inventory of the 155-acre park for 24 consecutive hours. He’ll even reward them with pizza tonight and hamburgers tomorrow. “It’s our way of thanking you for identifying significant habitat so that we can protect them,” he says. “The more we know what’s in the park, the better decisions we can make about how to manage the land.”
Fri., June 9, 3 p.m.

This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2006.