Got bats?

Little browns are the most common bats in North America. They have adapted
to humans moving into the landscape by using certain manmade structures to
roost

As I was driving this afternoon, I found myself behind a pickup truck that represented a local pest control business. On the tailgate, I saw the question, "Got Bats?" This reminded me not only of my past experiences with these gentle creatures, but also the fact that Texas boasts one of the largest bat colonies in the world (if not the largest).

Bracken Cave is located in San Antonio, TX and is considered to house the largest colony of Mexican free-tail bats in the world. It is estimated that 20 million bats reside in this cave, making this group the largest concentration of mammals in the world. While this cave is protected and owned by Bat Conservation International, you can still enjoy watching the Mexican free-tails take flight at dusk at the Congress Avenue bridge. This bridge boasts the largest population of urban bats in the world. I have yet to travel to San Antonio to watch these creatures, but it is certainly on my to-do list.

When I was living in Columbus, I used to live in a house that apparently had some sort of entry point for some bats to make a nightly visit. Thankfully, I didn't have a colony roosting in the attic, but I did have several encounters with lone bats who somehow found themselves in the living sections of the house only to have trouble finding their way out. As a result, I provided some assistance, putting me up-close and personal with our winged cousins. I learned a lot about bats in the process:

Bats belong to a very unique animal group called "Chiroptera," which means "hand-wing," and are grouped with primates and lemurs in a grand order called "Archonta."

Most bats can see as well as humans. Fruit bats are well-suited to seeing in low-light and they see in color.

Insect-eating bats are equipped with a built-in sonar system that allows them to navigate at break-neck speed through total darkness. Their unique echolocation ability is literally thousands of times more efficient than any similar system built by humans.

Bats are not ugly or dirty. With the exception to a few species, bats are generally very cute. Like cats, bats spend a lot of time grooming themselves.

There are over 1100 species of bats and of those species, only 3 are vampire bats, which are mostly limited to Latin America. The remaining species feed on insects, fruit, nectar, and pollen.

Insect-eating bats can consume billions of tons of insects each summer, thereby protecting our crops and keeping costs down at market.

Fruit bats bring us over 450 commercial products and 80 medicines through pollination and seed dispersal. Over 95% of rainforest regrowth comes from seeds that have been spread by fruit bats.

Bats don't "carry" rabies, but they can catch it just like any other mammal. In fact, less than one half of one percent of bats actually contract rabies. Annually, more people die from contact with household pets than have died from contact with bats in all recorded history.

Bats are shy, gentle, and intelligent.

They are among the slowest reproducing animals on earth, birthing only one live young per year.

A mother bat nurses her young from a pair of pectoral breasts.

The average life span of a bat is 25-40 years.

Bat populations are declining. Half the bats in the US are listed as rare, threatened or endangered.

The health of a bat colony can indicate the health of the surrounding environment. Like frogs, they are considered an indicator species.

A nursing little brown bat mother can eat more than her body weight nightly (up to 4,500 insects).

A mother Mexican Free-tailed Bat can produce more than five times as much milk as an average Holstein cow.

Little Brown Bats, while hibernating can reduce their heart rate to 20 beats per minute and can stop breathing for 48 minutes at a time. Little Brown Bats can hibernate for more than seven months if left undisturbed.

These amazing creatures deserve our respect and admiration, not repugnance or cruelty. I would gladly welcome these creatures-of-the-night around my home. I'm glad that they entered my world as they did; I learned to appreciate a much maligned animal. I can proudly say that I used to have bats in my belfry.