Skagway School’s fourth and fifth grade classes explore life in Skagway with interviews and experiences in their home town in this new Community Corner series.

By Iris Hansen

On August 20, 2024, Jen Larson, a biologist from the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park came into the fourth grade classroom at Skagway School to teach fourth grade students about animals that live in the national park such as small mammals, land and sea birds, large mammals, fish, and boreal toads. The students learned interesting facts about the boreal toad.  Boreal toads lay their eggs in long clear strips, they are the size of a fingernail, and they go back to the place they were born every year!

Boreal toads aren’t the only animal Jen studies, she also studies bats with acoustic bat boxes and their mist netting. Did you know that bats are the only mammals that can fly? There are over 1,400 species of bats including long legged myotis, keen’s myotis, western long eared and silver haired bat. Bats are nocturnal hunting at night and sleeping up to twenty hours a day. Brown bats use echolocation to help them find prey in their environment, and it sounds like a bird chirping. When they catch their prey, they fly about twelve miles per hour to catch insects swatting their tail and trapping the bugs with their wings. Did you know that bats can eat 1200 insects in an hour? Brown bats eat their prey with their teeth that are the size of the tip of a toothpick. If a bat’s teeth are worn down, they are an old bat, and if they are nice and sharp the bat is young. When winter comes, it’s time to hibernate in their ruse or their home. A big thank you to Jen Larson for coming into the fourth grade classroom to teach us about local animals.