Facts About Bats

Bats... What is brought to your mind when you hear the name? Is Batman the first thing brought to mind? What about Dracula? Maybe witches and brooms, or perhaps Halloween. Maybe you think of blindness, possibly even secrecy. Or perhaps you are one of the few who upon hearing the word “bat” think of the little creature swooping down to eat insect after insect with near mathematically calculated precision. Sadly, if you are the average person you are more likely to think of the earlier claims. Mainly because pop culture has deemed bats a nuisance, while also imagining their little bodies to strike fear in the heart of the so called “king of the food chain,” Humans.
Solitary one of the most famous examples of bats being given a bad rap would

Who cares if bats are thought of as evil creatures?” Well my reader many people care, and I am sure the bats who have died by being bludgeoned to the point of obliteration care as well. I do not mean to turn this into a dark place, but it is a common occurrence for things like this to happen to an already extremely vulnerable species. To this day we know so little about bats that we are unable to tell if some species went completely extinct, yet we do know enough that they are not doing well. Actions like bats who were roosting in building crevices being foamed in, and suffocating to death are not something unheard of in the bat community. Given this, here are some facts to describe how important bats are to our lives. Accordingly, as Amanda Loller from Bat World Sanctuary states “bats have the intelligence of a dolphin, and they can live up to 20 years. During their twenty years a single bat can eat up to 20,000,000 insects in its lifetime.” Now I am sure you are wondering why these facts even matter, I mean they are just some insects! Well those insects eat the crops that feed you, and without bats insect populations have ever been on the rise. With those insect populations going out of control, not only do you need to use more bug spray. But that also means more devastating things like farmers must use more pesticides to remove the bugs off their crops. Which

Nor is it fair to us, people deserve the facts about bats. I encourage you as a reader to look more into bats, and what you can do for them. Bat conservation International is a great place to start, so is contacting our local WDFW to get the facts! I encourage you to not listen to popular culture that sheds no light on what bats face, and portrays them in a dark light such as Dracula did with the Common Vampire bat. Let us not have bats as a vital staple to our society lost forever because they are not as cute and cuddly as a Giant