Why are Bats Important?
These small, shy, unique, and gentle creatures are amongst the most feared, persecuted, and killed of any group of mammals worldwide.
Rare fossils found show that bats have been around, in very much their present form and 13 families for 50 million years. Worldwide there are about 1300 species of bats, and South Africa is home to 57 of those species.
The Longevity and Adaptability of Bats
It is impossible to tell when first flight was developed or what bats were before developing flight.
Due to their longevity there cannot be many virus or disease that they have not been exposed to in that time and the research that scientists are doing is showing them to have antibodies to many of the ailments they are blamed for today. The saying ‘been there done that, got the t shirt’ is very true for bats.
The Marvel of Bat Diversity
Once you start to form an understanding of bats you realize what amazing and complex creatures they really are and the vital role they play in almost every habitat worldwide.
Found in most habitats except for extreme desert and polar regions with the Ussurian tube-nosed bat of Japan joining polar bears as the only animals known to hibernate in snow.
Anatomy and Abilities of Bats
Bats fall under the order of Chiroptera, a name meaning hand wing in Greek. Bats wings are made up of a foreshortened upper arm, forearm and very elongated finger bones covered by a double layer of membrane.
Bats make up 20% of all mammal species and are the only mammal capable of true sustained flight. Having to find and catch a tiny insect or moth in flight in the dark takes hard work and brain power.
No wonder some of the species have another super power – echolocation. This is also very complicated in bats as their faces are shaped depending on whether they echolocate via the throat or the nose also the frequency and volume plays a part.
Torpor which is a daily hibernation used by insectivorous bats, is used to conserve energy during the day as flying and feeding on the wing is very energy intensive.
Vision and Reproduction
No bat is blind and they can all see very well with fruit bats having far better vision than most and said to be able to see colour at night.
It is thought that ‘blind as a bat’ comes from people believing that as they fly at night they do not need to see and ‘bats in the belfry’ to describe a mad person comes from the noise thousands of bats would have made emerging from the local church bell tower.
Bats for their size have a very slow reproductive rate generally one pup per year. Some species do have twins but in a bad year one, generally the male, will be abandoned; as females have far more reproductive use to the species.
A pup has a very hard time in its first year of life with only about 30% surviving the first year. Born as helpless as our young and about 25% of mums size but with adult sized feet (eek!) they are totally dependant on her for warmth, food and protection.
Once they survive their first year they will go on to live long lives as unlike other small mammals bats have been recorded living 20, 30 or 40 years or more.
Some interesting bat facts
The worlds smallest mammal is the tiny Kitti’s hog nosed bat found in a small area of Thailand. The size of a bumble bee and weighing about 2g.
The largest bat is the Giant Golden Crowned Flying Fox with a wingspan of about 1.8 m and weighing about 1.3 kg.
Speed – some species fly so slowly they can hear and pluck a beetle from a leaf while others have been recorded flying at 160km per hour.
The largest concentration of mammals live in the Bracken Cave system in Texas with an estimated 20 million bats it is also the worlds largest bat colony.
Scientists studying vampire bats in South America found their saliva has an anticoagulant and they then went back to their laboratories and developed a blood thinning drug which they then called Draculin.
How Can We Help these Special Creatures of the Night
Be tolerant and keep your kitties indoors at night. Kitty will find a roost and catch bats as they emerge or return. Try to keep kitty inside during the early evening and then around dawn
Welcome them in your roof and on your eaves. We have built beautiful bat houses in our roofs and destroyed so many of the natural habitat. Stuart and I lie in bed in the mornings watching the bats come back into our roof. My thoughts on fruit bats under eaves is that they are being so predated on by monkeys in the trees they prefer that they have adapted and found a safe space
Don’t use pesticides to kill the caterpillars eating your plants, you are killing bird and bat food
Plant indigenous and go a little wild in areas. This helps to encourage insects, beetles and moths. Also plant light coloured flowers, at night they will attract these insects to your garden.
Turn off the artificial lights around your garden especially bright spotlights. It has been found that artificial light has become a real problem with numbers of insects decreasing, feeding and breeding patterns changing. The light delays emergence from the roost as some bat species who are reluctant to fly when too light. Some of the bats who feed in more darker areas will move thus leaving a gap in the feeding chain which could lead to more insects in the area. Brighter light can cause bats to become easier prey for birds of prey such as owls. Research has found that insects’ behavior, feeding, and breeding patterns change in areas lit up, and this is leading to the decrease in insects, beetles, and moths worldwide.
Build a water feature to encourage insects and also if correctly built the bats will be able to drink.
Conservation and Protection
We do not advise any form of disturbance or exclusion of roosts from September, when pregnant mums are returning to roosts, to the end of April, when we are certain pups are flying and independent.
The Role of Bats in the Ecosystem
Bats are our best friends in so many ways and should not be feared or harmed in any way. They are the main predators of night flying insects, beetles and moths.
A tiny 4g Banana bat, the smallest we have in our area, consumes about 25% of its body weight in mosquito sized insects every night and more if she is lactating, this equates to about 2500 to 3000 insects per night per bat.
Yes! researchers do sit in laboratories analyzing the DNA of bat guano and then weighing the type of insects found and working out how many the bat could have eaten in the night.
Free tailed bats have very long narrow wings and are capable of flying very high and they love Eldana moth, the scourge of the sugar cane industry.
The Yellow-bellied house bat is a beetle specialist and live in little family groups of 3 or 4 bats.
The Importance of Fruit Bats
Fruit bats of which Whallbergi Epauletted fruit bat is the most common we have in this area are seed dispensers and pollinators.
Their favorite food is the fruit of the ficus trees and if you stand watching in the early evening you will see them swooping in taking fruit and then heading off to a safe spot to eat.
The mighty baobab owes its very existence to these small creatures and without them to pollinate the next generation there would be a catastrophic collapse of whole ecosystems that live in these trees.
About 450 plants species worldwide owe their existence to bats either by pollination or seed dispersal.
Legal Protection
Bats are classified as wildlife and therefore it is illegal to disturb a roost, poison or kill in any way.
There is no poison registered in South Africa to kill bats. All bat handlers, rehabbers and sanctuaries should be permitted in KZN by KZN Wildlife.
Remember everything in nature in one way or another depends on each other for survival. Just a little something I read the other day:
If mosquitoes went extinct,
birds and bats would starve,
if roaches went extinct,
the nitrogen cycle would be disrupted,
if wasps went extinct,
some plants would go extinct too,
We may not like “pests”
but they all have a purpose.
May your footprint on the earth be a soft and may you be a guardian of this beautiful planet we live on. Every action has a reaction.
Author: Brenda Angus
Bazley Beach
April 2024
