Bats: Small winged creatures with leathery wings, fuzzy bodies, and sometimes an evil looking face while others sport somewhat of a pig looking face, and still others with their own unique strange looking face.  These creatures are well known around the world and even misunderstood, feared to be real killers even though most aren’t even after anyone’s blood at all.

          Bats are in fact mammals, unique FLYING mammals, and are important to the world because of how they in fact HELP the environment not HARM the environment.  Not only are they interesting creatures who love the night but there are quite a few who are very intelligent, such as the Samoan Flying Bats.  Poor little guys are still misunderstood and even thought as death bringers in some parts of the world even though today there are books and the Internet with great and knowledgeable information on bats.  But I still have faith that these guys will get the recognition not the fear that they deserve.

          Found all around the world, there are almost 1,000 different types of bats and can be found almost anywhere but hot deserts and really cold Polar Regions; those who enjoy a tasty meal of insects can be found more in northern Canada while down closer to the equator approximately 150 species can be found including those delightful non- insect eaters making climate an interesting factor in how the diversity of the bats are spaced out around the world.

          The saying ‘blind as bat’ is a farce for bats can see though they prefer the night life; sleeping during the day in their caves, trees, or wherever they prefer to hang upside down and partying and eating all night long.  Only being able to see in black and white, they do rely mostly on their HUGE ears and their exquisite hearing to hear their calls, a very high pitched clicking sound, as it bounces or either walls or their delicious meal of the night.  Each call from a bat has its own unique sound depending on the species of the bat, such as the sound from a Mexican free-tailed bat is lower sounding, only a frequency of about 40 kHz where as a Big Brown Bat has a high frequency going up high in-between 90 and 100 kHz; very interesting to know especially since the baby bats rely on knowing the sounds and frequencies so that they can find their mothers if they wander off.

          Food wise bats enjoy a wide selection on their menu such as scorpions, insects, fruits, pollen, and leaves while some enjoy more of the richer things n life such as blood, fish, frogs, birds, and even other bats.  Yummy!

           The carnivorous little bats enjoy  mainly the frogs, lizards, birds and other bats, wanting a little more meat in their diet; even a few of these bats will add insects and fruits to their diet, wanting to keep a healthy diet of course. 

The fish eating bats are also known as piscivory and actually only about 6 different species really eat the fish; these bats also enjoying the meat filled diet with a little more Omega-3 vitamins from the fish than the other species.

Vampire bats, also categorized as sanguivory, are the most misunderstood and feared bats of all.  They do not attack humans as people fear, not wanting our polluted blood in their diets, but would rather feast on the rich blood from animals such as cows and other domestic animals.  And though it is said that humans are preyed by these little winged vampires, they do not care for your blood; they may just be curious in us just as some of us are curious about them.  What is most interesting about vampire bats is that they don’t just dig their fangs into the soft skin of a cow and suck the blood, oh no…they make a ‘v’ like cut and lick up the precious blood, enjoying every single lick.  The common vampire bats is said to be able to drink up to 1 fluid ounce of blood each night and because of how rich and heavy blood can be, these bats can have a problem flying but they have evolved and their wings and wing muscles are much stronger so that they can lift off and fly back to their cave, or sometimes known as roosts.  Vampire bats are sadly the victims of the most bat killings because of their sometimes rabies infested bite transfers into their victims; these bats always blamed for these occasional outbreaks in Latin America.

                Who doesn’t like a crunchy insect for a meal?  Humans do consume them in parts of the world and so do bats.  Insectivorous bats enjoy not only insects but scorpions and spiders as well; about 70% of all bats enjoying insects as a main part of their diet.  Even though they mostly like the beetles, moths, flies, and mosquitoes, they will snatch up cockroaches, termites, crickets, katydids, cicadas, and night-flying ants, most as seen as of course pests.  Our little pest control bats to the rescue if only we would let them be and stop interfering with their lives, and stop fearing them since they do in fact HELP us by eating such nasty little bugs, especially the mosquitoes who do like to carry around diseases from person to person or animal to person.

         Bats do enjoy a bit of plant vegetation in their diet, eating up certain tasty plant parts such as the fruit, nectar, pollen, and leaves, though fruit is their favorite meal.  Have to have your fruits and vegetables included in your diet to stay healthy so why not in the bats diets too?  Even though leaves do not taste typically tasty, it is proven that the intelligent flying foxes can chew on the leaves for a while and release the liquid protein, ingest it, and spit out the rest of the leaf.  Like I said earlier, flying foxes are rather intelligent bats, not to mention cute in my opinion. J  Frugivorous is also another name for the fruit bats, which prefer the ripest juiciest of fruits over the not so ripe fruits.  Some of these bats do have teeth, but they prefer to use their long tongues to push against the fruit’s skin, squeezing out the juice of the gods from the fruit, and drinking it down either right at the plants that they were attracted to because of the sweet smells from the ripe fruit or back at the roosts.  Not only do the bats eat fruit but just like bees they also pollinate the fruit in other places, making the fruit and those plants more abundant, which then give them a bigger source of food.

             Those bats that feed on nectar and pollen, nectarivorous, have special long tongues with brush-like tip that helps the bat lap up a lot of nectar, and because they usually don’t chew their food, their teeth aren’t very sharp and they actually do not have those nice lower incisors most bats sport.

           Even though as I had stated before that bats are intelligent, they can be trained but are not pets.  Bats do migrate as well as hibernate during the winter months, just like most mammals, not wanting to be caught in the cold.  Those who hibernate store up on food before the long winter months just like other mammals i.e. bears, readying themselves for the long sleep-filled cold winter.  For those who migrate, they either migrate less than 200 miles or like the European Noctule travel over 2,400 miles and that does include the return trip as well.

                Sadly bats are disappearing at an alarming rate because of people and their lack of true knowledge about bats.  Humans are actually killing of the bat species without realizing it by destroying plants and the roots, some being eaten by other animals because their forging skills are slowly dying out as well as being killed by pesticide poisoning.  There are nearly 40% of the bats species on the federal endangered list and that is just in the United States and more are quickly becoming candidates for the list.

The Internet has plenty of information not just on the bats themselves and what they enjoy to eat, they also have information on how to help prevent these unique creatures from being wiped off the face of the Earth.  It is important for bats to stick around if we want our pest insect population to be kept under wraps.

Other interests have been taken on the concept of bats in comics turned movies and horror movies.  Batman for instance is a man who believes that he should save the world and does this in a costume that resembles a bat, his tools, cars, and everything he uses to fight crime in a huge cave known as the bat cave.  One of his foes is a giant bat having been transformed into a huge brown furry bat.  Another creature based off the vampire bat, is of course vampires, creatures who suck up human blood but biting into their poor victims’ necks, sometimes killing them or transforming them into more blood-sucking vampires.  Count Dracula the most famous of all vampires has appeared in numerous movies and books.  His best friends are vampire bats and his “children” and numerous wives that he himself created.

Bats will be kept alive in entertainment but it doesn’t help them stay alive in the real world.  To keep them alive in our world for the future of our environment we have to step up to the plate and help out.  An interesting way, if you are brave enough is to make a bat home in your backyard and have their favorite foods available to attract them and to keep them safe in your back yard.  It’s not keeping them as pets; it is helping preserve their species.  There are theses houses popping up all over the United States which is a great step towards bat preservation.  You can also join clubs to research more information about those bat species that are not well-known in order to help other humans gain this much needed knowledge.

If you are interested, there is also a new type of watching, like bird watching, but BAT watching.  The best places to go bat watching are in these states: Alabama, American Samoa, California, Missouri, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Texas.

 Here are some fun websites about bat watching:

http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/BatWatchWeb/index.html

http://gorp.away.com/gorp/activity/wildlife/bats.htm

http://www.capitalcruises.com/bat-watching/

http://www.outdooralabama.com/watchable-wildlife/Watchablearticles/batwatching.cfm