Some simple facts about bats

Bats have been misunderstood, and even feared, for centuries. Here are a few facts that might make you feel better about them!

Brown Long-eared bat (Plecotus auritus) photograph David Chapman

• Nearly 1,000 kinds of bats account for almost a quarter of all mammal species.
• Bats are extremely useful. They help to control the insect population, re-seed cut forests and pollinate plants that provide food for humans.
• In Britain it is illegal, without a licence, to intentionally catch, handle or disturb wild bats.
• Loss of bats increases demand for chemical pesticides, can jeopardise whole ecosystems of other animal and plant species, and can harm human economies.
• The mouse-eared bat was declared EXTINCT from Britain in 1991. Of the 14 species of bat left, 2 are ENDANGERED and 9 others are THREATENED.
• African heart-nosed bats can hear the footsteps of a beetle walking on sand from a distance of more than six feet.
• An anticoagulant from vampire bat saliva may soon be used to treat human heart patients.
• Baby bats are called pups and are born with no fur.
• Bacteria in their guano are useful in improving soaps, making gasohol and producing antibiotics, besides making a fertiliser.
• Bats are exceptionally vulnerable to extinction, in part because they are the slowest-reproducing mammals on earth for their size, most producing only one young annually.
• Bats are some of the loudest mammals on Earth.
• Bats have been on this planet for more than 50 million years.
• Giant flying foxes that live in Indonesia have wing spans of nearly six feet.
• Scientists have now decided there are two distinct types of pipistrelle, the brown-faced and the bandit.
• Some vampire bats have been known to adopt orphans and will even risk their lives to share food with less fortunate bats just because they share a roost. Most animals who share food only do so with their relatives.
• Sometimes thousands and thousands of bats live in colonies together.
• The world's smallest mammal is the bumble-bee bat of Thailand, weighing in at less than a penny.
• They do not generally live in belfries.
• They do not get entangled in your hair.
• Tropical bats are key elements in rainforest ecosystems, which rely on them to pollinate flowers and disperse seeds for countless trees and shrubs.
• When many bats roost, they hang upside down - most bats spend the daytime resting in this position.
• Worldwide, bats are the most important natural enemies of night-flying insects. A single bat can catch 600 mosquitoes in just one hour.

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