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DID YOU KNOW . . .
* It would cost farmers billions of dollars each year, to do the job bats do: Protect fields & crops from insects.
* If farmers didn't have this help from bats, we would have very few crops to harvest - and those we did get would be drenched with pesticides.
* Bat guano/droppings are the best organic fertilizer known to man.
* Bats can fly REALLY HIGH UP, well over 1000 feet! This is also where moths migrate. Bats love to eat moths.
* 70% of all bat species eat insects: They rid the environment of more insect pests than all man-made efforts combined.
* Most of the remaining 30% of bats eat fruit or nectar: Nectar-drinking bats help pollinate fruit trees. Fruit-eating bats help distribute seeds.
* The biggest bats, such as the endangered Flying Fox, eat fruit.
* The smaller ones eat bugs and small animals (mice, frogs).
* Bug-eating bats can eat their own body-weight in gnats and mosquitoes every night!!
* Fewer than 3% of all bats are the "blood-drinkers" that give bats a bad name. These real vampires are smaller than the palm of your hand. They prefer to go after livestock; each bat drinks less than one ounce per night, certainly not enough to "drain" their prey (like they do in the movies). We don't have vampire bats in the United States, except in zoos.
* Bats are furry little mammals. Babies drink their mother's milk.
* Baby bats are called pups. Mother bats can only have one pregnancy per year. Most mothers give birth to only one pup, per year. For this reason, many species of bats are threatened or endangered (they don't breed rapidly like mice).
* When a pup is still very small, it sometimes rides along with its mother by clinging to her fur (much like a baby monkey).
* When pups grow too big to take along, the mothers leave them behind with other pups in a nursery group, while they hunt for food. Pups learn to fly at 3-4 weeks of age.
* The long thin bones in a bat's wings are actually its fingers!! The scientific name for bats is Chiroptera: the word comes from the Greek words cheir "hand" and pteron "wing".
* There are over 900 species of bats in the world -- that's 25% of all mammals!
* Bats come in all shapes and sizes -- from the size of a tiny hummingbird to the size of a hawk. They are the only mammals capable of true flight (gliding doesn't count).
* Bats aren't blind. They can see with their eyes, but use echolocation because it works best for their needs: Hunting insects in the air, in the dark.
* The largest bat colony in the world is in Bracken Cave, Texas. During the summer, this cave is home to as many as 20 MILLION Mexican free-tailed bats.
* The Bracken Cave colony protects Texas fields and crops by consuming several hundred tons - TONS - of insects EVERY NIGHT.
Nobody, but NOBODY can top that.
