Bat Facts

Things you probably didn't know

1. Bats are the largest controllers of night flying insects - 70 percent of bats eat insects.
2. One bat can eat between 500 and 1000 mosquito sized insects an hour.
3. The 20 million bats of Brackens Cave eat 250 tons of insects a night.
4. In the American southwest deserts bats play an important role in fertilizing the plants. The flowers of the Century plant are inactive during the day. Since they only open at night bats pollinate them.
5. The flowers of the Pipe Organ Cactus only open at night also, and are pollinated by bats as well.
6. The Sarjareo Cactus even goes a step farther and the flowers don't open until after midnight so it doesn't have to compete with the early bloomers for bats to pollinate it's flowers.
7. Without bats many desert species of plants would die out.
8. In devastated ran forest bats are vital to re-establishing the forest. The first plants to grow in devastated areas are often bat introduced.
9. The Coronia Bat can disperse as many as 60,000 seeds in a single night.
10. On the island of Guam 40 percent of the plants depend on bats for pollination or seed dispersal. There are only about 500 Mariannas Bats left on Guam.
11. On Guam the decline of the bat population means that the bats aren't eating the fruit of the island plants. This has led to an increase in the fruit fly population on the island that is now posing a problem for commercial fruit production.
12. About 70 percent of the worlds fruit comes from plants that are pollinated in the wild by bats. Some domestic plants need wild strains to maintain genetic diversity. If the bats go and there are no wild banana plants to help maintain the domestic strains you may have to skip bananas on your corn flakes at breakfast.
13. In developing countries bat guano is a valuable resource. It is an excellent fertilizer.
14. In Austin, Texas the one million mexican freetail bats that live there eat between 15,000 and 30,000 pounds of insects a night. Bats have also become a tourist attraction in Austin.
15. Each species of bat makes it's own unique sound. Bats can be identified by this sound without ever seeing them.
16. Freetail bats got the name because they have a little exposed tail. Most bats have a membrane that extends to the end of the tail.
17. One fish eating bat can detect something the size of a human hair only 1 mm above the surface of the water.
18. Over 100 species of bats live in the rain forest of Central America. Caves are rare there so many of them live in hollow trees.
19. The biggest threat to bats comes from humans. Bat populations are declining world wide at an alarming rate. Sometimes this is due to accidental disturbance of bat habitat by humans, sometimes by the intentional destruction of habitat and the killing of bats.