A letter on bats
For only a second, you spot a shadowy swishing of wings. Glimpsed in twilight moments, bats are dark ghosts flitting silently past, mysterious creatures full of secrets waiting to be discovered.
A male short tailed fruit bat observes his surroundings as he hangs from foliage.
For most, the closest interaction to a bat will be a flicker at dusk or through the glass at the zoo. A rarer occurrence may even be an encounter with one of these flying mammals that slipped into one’s home in confusion. These incidents may be horrifying to the humans, but a bat stuck in an unfamiliar space with large, loud people without a seeming escape is likely far more stressed than the humans (1).
When I hold a bat in my hand*, the first thing I notice is her ferocity. A healthy, untamed bat, when caught, is fierce, teeth baring, biting. Best to wear thick gloves. The second thing I notice are her wings. Stretched out, I see the delicate bones spreading out through papery soft wing. How widely those wings unfurl compared to the velvety little bat between them! When I open my hand and she flies away, those wings make soft thrumming whistle to each wing beat, like taut ribbons in the wind. Each individual seems to have a slightly different sound when they fly, like a fingerprint. I notice when she swoops in to hang from the ceiling at a safe distance, the bat is constantly moving, finding a more comfortable grip, nose leaf quivering, ears pivoting, stretching her head left and right to get a better look at me. She may give a high frequency squawk of annoyance when another bat lands too close. The sound barely registers, almost out of my hearing range.
Unlike many mammals, bat pups are born with fur, hard skulls, and strong claws. The mother flies while the pup hangs on tightly, a fuzzy, silken lump a third of his mother’s weight when born. Normally graceful, the mother flies awkwardly until the pup is able to hang from the ceiling on his own. Eventually, the pup is clumsily taking to the air. He still hangs limply, not mature enough, possibly, to keep his muscles flexed while hanging from the ceiling. Soon, he will be able to fly nimbly with powerful wings and grasp the ceiling with strong limbs.
When I walk into the colony, the first thing I notice is their agility. Before I get used to their acrobatics, I have the constant impulse to duck. After a while, though, I adapt. I know the bats may seem to fly straight at me, but they swerve at the last second. Sometimes I wonder if they do it on purpose. The bats seem to be even better at evading the swing of the net when I try to catch them. Even so, I have lost count of the number of times I’ve seen bats collide in midair, the number of times they’ve accidentally landed on another bat instead of the ceiling.
A short-tailed fruit bat approaches an orchid. Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
Because of their impressive physiology, possibly related to their ability to fly, bats can “get sick,” without feeling or appearing sick. A bat may get a virus without symptoms, without their body attempting to fight it off, and continue to survive and live as normal. Within a bat colony, a disease can easily remain, getting passed around from bat to bat (2, 3, 4, 5). Instead of wiping out bats to prevent these diseases from getting to us, we can learn from bat physiology on how to fight off infection, and even live longer (2, 6, 7).
In addition to being important sources of study, bats are often overlooked as significant pollinators and insect control (8). However, with more than 1400 species of bats, these flying mammals are major pollinators of food we love, such as mangos and avocados (9). Here in the Pacific Northwest, our local bats eat up to more than their body weight in insects such as moths (which I appreciate, because I hate moths!) and mosquitos in a single evening (10 11 12, 13).
Before I had to be concerned about passing SARS-CoV-2 to my bat colony, I had spent hours in the bat rooms observing, giving out banana treats, getting the bats more comfortable with being around me. There were even some that were brave enough to hover in front of my hand to snatch a bite of banana. Some of them missed, one even tried to fly away with my fingertip when he accidentally chomped down on it next to the banana bit I was holding. While the bite was painful for me, fortunately, his teeth did not even break through the nitrile glove I was wearing, and I learned my lesson to be more careful about how I pass out treats. I haven’t spent time in the bat rooms just to observe for more than a year. The juveniles I was hoping to get comfortable with me are now adults, and they do not find me familiar or consider me a source of treats.
I miss my bats. Soon, I will get to spend time with them again.
*DO NOT ever handle bats with bare hands; DO NOT handle bats without the appropriate training, with the exception of fallen bats or abandoned bat pups (14, see below under resources).
**Descriptions are based on interactions with a single colony of short-tailed fruit bats (15, carollia perspicillata) in captivity, so they may be inaccurate for wild bats, other colonies, or other species.
Resources
1) What to do when a bat accidentally flies into your home
2) Bats’ ability to host diseases
3) What we can learn from bats’ immune systems
5) How ability to fly may help bats defend themselves from disease
7) Why bats have long lifespans
8) Bats as pollinators and insect predators
11) Hoary bats facts
14) What to do if you find an abandoned bat pup or injured bat