Most bats are devoted mates and can barely stand separation from one another. Of course with almost one thousand species existing worldwide, as with human preferences, bats' mating behavior run the gamut of possibilities. When bats migrate, they climb to more than 10,000 feet to cruise. Of the 155 species of mammals in Belize, 85 of them are bats, an amazing 55%.

Bats are the only true flying mammal and are unquestioned champions of aeronautics. Bats are our own distant relative. The bones of a bat's wings are essentially the same design as those in human arms and hands, having a thumb and four fingers. The brains of flying foxes have more in common with primates than they do with rodents. Bats can hibernate at will. If there is a food shortage due to weather changes, bats can shut down their metabolism and sleep until better times. When a hibernating bat is disturbed, its body temperature rises in preparation for escape and thereby costs from 10 to 30 days of stored fat reserve.

Where bats hang isn't random. Each has his own berth on the wall and they roost near a cave entrance or on a particularly warm pocket of the ceiling. They are extremely loyal to their caves of birth and hibernation. To them it is nothing less than "Home Sweet Home." Bats employ a sonar system which is 1,000 times more sophisticated than any of man's similar inventions.

   

Birds have beaks and feathers and bats have teeth and a living membrane stretched between their "fingers". Unlike feathers, this membrane can mend if damaged. Unlike feathers, however, if serious damage occurs to the membrane it will cripple the bat since it cannot be shed and replaced.

A bird's wing is fixed. A bat can scoop things up with its wing, cradle a new baby in the bottom of its wing, wrap a wing around itself like a shawl, and slingshot food into its mouth. Some bats live to be more than thirty years old, almost half the span of humans.

Babies are born hairless and for survival need to maintain a body temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. When disturbed they move to colder places and often die of exposure. Sometimes the mothers are so panicked by disturbance they drop the babies who die on the spot. When a mother returns from a hunt, she calls to her baby and her baby calls back. Their unique voices and smells, even in a noisy nursery of thousands or millions of calling bats, enable mothers and babies to find each other.

An infant bat is 1/3 of its mother's weight at birth. It is the same as a human giving birth to a forty pound baby. Mexican Free-tailed Bats are born in June and weaned in five weeks when they can fly with their mothers.

The loss of bats could seriously threaten the survival of tropical rain forests since they are the major seed dispersers of many tropical plants and trees. Sixty percent of bats do not survive infancy; a female has only one infant a year so population recovery is quite slow. In Central and and South America, fruit and insectivorous bats are often the victims of indiscriminate blasting of caves to control Vampire Bat populations.

   

Destruction of bat colonies will cause entire cave ecosystems to be eliminated. One campaign in Brazil destroyed more than 8,000 cave colonies. How far does a bat have to decline before it is declared endangered? In the southwest U.S. the Free-tailed Bat, which is the most abundant in most areas, has declined by 99.99%. bats cluster in large colonies. A million bats can be wiped out in less than five minutes because of easy access and vulnerability.

Bats are sensative to enviromental changes. It would be nice if people would stop only being compassionate to the animals they relate to because they have big brown eyes or beautiful fur. Bats are not nice looking animals to many people. Just like a bat, a weed is just a plant whose virtues haven't been discovered. Some of the ugliest animals on earth are among the most ecologically and economically valuable. Or as in bush medicine, "the bitter the better". Cute and cuddly has nothing to do with intrinsic value. Lets love and protect our Bats.