10 reasons to celebrate bats this Halloween

October 17, 5:20 PMNew Orleans Pet Services ExaminerKelly Jason

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the New Orleans Pet Services Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Hanging flying fox

Getty Images/Theo Allofs

Spooky bat images are a Halloween staple, yet bats are anything but spooky. They are, in fact, shy and gentle mammals that are hugely helpful to humans. Similar to the comic book Batman, they are do-gooders, defending society from "bad guys." So, if you’re afraid of bats, don’t get rid of the bats—get rid of your fear.

Here are 10 reasons to celebrate these marvelous creatures:

1. Bats eat insects, tons of ‘em. A single small brown bat can put away 1,000 mosquitoes in just one hour. With the exception of three species of nectar-feeding bats, all bats in the U.S. are insectivorous. 
2. A colony of 150 big brown bats can protect farmers from as many as 18 million rootworms each summer. Not only do they control pests, their guano is so rich in nitrogen that it’s often used as fertilizer. 
3. We wouldn’t be able to enjoy the fruits of certain plants—bananas, mangoes, cashews, and figs, to name just a few—if bats didn’t pollinate and disperse their seeds.  
4. The anticoagulant from the saliva of vampire bats (found only in South America, by the way) is now used in a synthesized form as medication for human heart patients. 
5. Less than one-half of 1% of all bats has rabies. Since bats are nocturnal and elusive, you’re more likely to be struck by a streetcar while fending off an unvaccinated dog than to be bitten by a rabid bat. 
6. Bats are not only non-aggressive—they only bite in self-defense—but exhibit altruistic behavior as well, such as adopting orphan bats or risking their lives to share food with less fortunate bats. 
7. Bats are valuable study subjects. Most bats communicate and navigate with high-frequency sounds so sophisticated that they can detect, in pitch darkness, obstacles as fine as a human hair. On a watt-per-watt, ounce-per-ounce basis their echolocation system is literally billions of times more efficient than any similar human invention.  
8. Bats are extremely vulnerable to extinction, and they produce only one offspring each year. A decrease in bat populations increases the demand for chemical pesticides, which damages entire ecosystems for other animals and plants, not to mention humans. 
9. Although they’re sometimes called “flying rats,” bats aren’t related to rodents; scientists believe they’re more closely related to primates, which means, they’re our cousins. 
10. In some Far Eastern cultures, the bat is a symbol of happiness and good luck.

If you'd like to help North American bats, which are being threatened by a deadly disease known as white-nose syndrome, visit the Speak Out for Our Bats petition page at The Animal Rescue site.

Sources: The Humane Society of the United States and The Encyclopedia Smithsonian