TRANSLATION OF THE INFORMATION BOARD ON SITE:
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Prof. Dubois had the Owl Tower built in 1937, with the aim, among other things, of not only housing bats and owls, but above all of researching them. The tower has a floor area of 4 by 4 meters, is 15 meters high and has four floors. To ensure a constant temperature for the bats even in winter, a chimney with smoke outlets through all floors was installed in the tower.
The upper floor is intended for nesting places for owls and kestrels, the lower floor for swallows. The largest part is intended for bats, which were actually intended to fight mosquitoes.
Over the years, the tower fell into disrepair.
In 2008 (150 years after Dubois' birth), the Stichting Studiegroep Leudal e.o. founded the initiative to restore the tower.
The restoration was completed in spring 2011.
. . . The inventor and commissioner for the construction of this tower is the doctor, geologist and paleontologist Prof. Eugene Dubois.
He was born on January 28, 1858 in Eijsden . . . (note: located south of Maastricht) . . . and died on December 16, 1940 here on the estate "De Bedelaar" in Haelen, which he had acquired in 1906 with the aim of recreating a kind of prehistoric nature park based on the fossils he had found in the Tegelse clay.
He became known for his controversial discovery of the Pithecantropus Erectus, the upright ape-man. At a young age, fascinated by the evolutionary theories of Darwin and Haeckel, he began to search for fossils of the missing link between apes and humans. He found it on Java between 1891 and 1893.
In the last years of his life, Dubois lived permanently in Begelaar. There, as a nature lover par excellence, he continued his scientific research and experiments. These included some very striking buildings, such as this "Owl Tower".
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