Bats Get Bad Rap: Misunderstood Creatures Important To FL Environment

OLDSMAR, FL — If there was ever an animal that could use a good public relations campaign, it's the unfairly villainized bat.

Its association with blood-sucking vampires, the misconception that they carry rabies and the use of negative expressions like "bats in the belfry" and "going batty" have given the bat a bad rap.

During October, National Bat Appreciation Month, and International Bat Week Oct. 24-31, the nonprofit Owl's Nest Sanctuary for Wildlife in Odessa is not only trying to dispel misconceptions about bats but is asking wildlife lovers to help support the injured and orphaned bats at the sanctuary by adopting one of these tiny, flying mammals.

The adoption kits are available for $20 and include a certificate of adoption, a stuffed animal bat and a pamphlet outlining the benefits of bats to the environment.

"They have always been a favorite of mine since raising vampire bats and three species of fruit bats when I worked in the Busch Gardens Tampa Bay animal nursery," said Kris Porter, director of the sanctuary. "All the species of bats in Florida are insectivores. That means they eat a lot of moths, flies, dragonflies, beetles, wasps, ants and, especially, mosquitoes, making them extremely important to our environment."

Porter noted there are more than 1,300 species of bats around the world, and 13 of them live in Florida.

Although bats are small like rodents, they're more closely related to primates and humans than they are to mice or rats. And less than 1 percent of bats have rabies.

They are voracious insect eaters, consuming 50 percent of their body weight each night when they go out foraging.

After a gestation of 40 to 70 days, their babies, called pups, are born one per mother, although a female bat will occasionally give birth to twins. The tiny pups are a fourth of their mother's body weight and, because they are mammals, they nurse from their mother, which spends much of her time grooming and caring for the baby. She even forages for insects with her baby clinging to her.

"If you have not been up to the University of Florida, my alma mater, and seen the nightly flight from the bat houses, you need to witness it once," Porter said.

The University of Florida bat colony is on the north side of Museum Road, across from Lake Alice on the UF campus. The bat houses are designed to house about 750,000 bats, and there are between 450,000 to 500,000 bats living in the houses.

"It is the most incredible thing to see them all leave at dusk from the world's largest collection of occupied bat houses," she said.

Occupancy varies from house to house, and depends on the time of year, but there are an estimated 450,000-500,000 bats in the colony living in these houses."On the opposite side of Lake Alice, it is the most incredible thing to see them leave at dusk from the world's largest collection of occupied bat houses."

On a nightly basis, the bats from the UF colony eat 2.5 billion insects (more than 2,500 pounds) a night.

"Though there are so many things to talk about with bats, one of the most important is most all of them are becoming threatened or endangered, and they are crucial to our environment," Porter said.

"This year my team did an amazing job raising several of the Florida bat species," she said.

April 15 through Aug. 15 in Florida is the maternity season for bats, and this year the Odessa sanctuary raised and released five species of bats, including the evening bat, the Florida big brown bat, the tri-color bat, the Northern yellow bat and the Seminole bat, Porter said.

The sanctuary and its volunteer staff have also been caring for a distant relative of the bat — the flying squirrel.

The newborn flying squirrels are just 2.5 inches from their heads to the tips of their tails and weigh less than one-fifth of an ounce. They are blind, pink and hairless.

"Our team of flyer fosters is an elite group to raise such small, precious packages, but the gift they give back is so incredibly worth it," Porter said.

Those interested in receiving a bat adoption kit should email owlsnestsanctuaryforwildlife@gmail.com and put "bat adoption kit" in the subject line.