This is a risky business in a country where nobody has a credit history and legal ways of recovering bad loans (ie, without baseball bats) are weak.

ECONOMIST: Russia's economy

Ideally, bats need a warm spring followed by a summer without heavy rain and high winds and a steady cold winter so they remain in hibernation.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Scotland | Highlands and Islands | Baby bats hit by cold, wet summer

Boston University's Intelligent Mechatronics Lab launched operation Batcopter to better understand how bats can fly in clusters large enough to be detected by radar without colliding.

ENGADGET: Batcopter UAV observes anti-collision bat behavior, crashes into ground (video)

"If you have bats roosting in your building, you can't disturb them in any way without getting a special license, " says Kelly Gunnell, Built Environment Officer with the Bat Conservation Trust, a charitable organization in London, England.

CNN: Architects building dream homes for bats