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Bats
and More Bats! Colossal Cave Mountain Park serves as home or way station to almost half the bat species found in the state of Arizona, including some rare and threatened ones. The females
of two of the species winter in hibernation in nearby cooler
caverns and crevices, usually at higher elevations. In the spring
they move to lower elevations to bear their young in "maternity
colonies." These may be in buildings, mine tunnels, or caverns
like Colossal Cave.
Both species are insect feeders. |
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 Townsend'sBig-eared Bat. Photo taken at the Colossal Cave entrance. |
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Cave
Myotis Bat.
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One other species bears its young in Colossal Cave (and is also likely to have maternity roosts in warmer places, such as buildings or holes in saguaro cactus). This species, too, is an insect feeder:
Three bat species use Colossal Cave, not as a nursery, but as a summer home or a stopover point in their migrations:
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Choeronycteris Bat.
Photo taken at the Colossal Cave entrance. |
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 Colossal Cave Mountain Park’s remarkable variety of terrains and habitats offers favorable spots other than Colossal Cave for roosting, hunting, and breeding to at least five additional species of bats. Say “bats” and most of us think “cave.” And, indeed, three of the other Park species often inhabit caves, but are not currently known to use Colossal. Other geologic features—the cracks and crevices in the rocky cliffs, for example—as well as the buildings probably offer shelter to them as they summer in the Park:
Three other bat species dwell at or use the Park’s La Posta Quemada Ranch facility where there is a small wooded riparian area that provides ideal accommodations for their particular needs:
This brings the number of bat species inhabiting Colossal Cave Mountain Park (recorded to date) to 12—an amazing 42.8% of the known species in Arizona—and makes the Park one of the premier bat habitats in the state. But watch this space: the possibility is high that four more species inhabit Colossal Cave Mountain Park and up to five others visit to feed or while migrating. |
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About bats... There are close to 1,000 species of bats in the world today. Forty-six species are known to reside in North America and of those, twenty-eight occur in Arizona. Bats in the Southwestern United States range in size from the tiny western Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus hesperus), weighing in at about two-tenths of an ounce with an eight-inch wingspan, to the Western Mastiff Bat (Eumops perotis), which boasts a wingspan of about two feet and a weight of 2.1 ounces. Female bats generally have one pup per year. To give birth to two is rare, and a very few species bear three or four. The pups are born feet first, a unique presentation among mammals. The mother bat hangs by her thumbs, curls her feet and tail membrane upward and inward to make a basket or cradle to catch her baby in. |
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Mama Bat with Pup. Photo taken in Mexico. |
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Economic
importance Of the remaining species, some bats eat nectar and pollen or fruit, thus pollinating the plants and dispersing seeds. These include important food and lumber plants in Indonesia, Australia, and South America. Here in the desert southwest, bats pollinate agaves, Organ Pipe cactus, and the very symbol of the desert, the giant Saguaro cactus. Some bat species catch and eat fish. Some eat frogs, and can determine which ones are poisonous by the sound of their mating calls. Some bats eat lizards, rodents, or birds, some eat other bats, and, yes, three species even drink fresh blood—the Vampires. Vampire
bats Fiction
and fact Bats are not blind—in fact, they can see very well. They also have great homing instincts and the ability to navigate in total darkness by echolocation. Echolocation is a sensory system by which they emit high-frequency sounds and interpret the echoes bouncing off objects—even as fine as a human hair—to determine distance and location. Myths about bats abound: for example, bats will get tangled in your hair (untrue), or bats or their guano (droppings) in your hair will cause it to fall out (also untrue), or all bats carry rabies. Although bats can contract and transmit rabies, it is not as common as with other mammals, like skunks. Rather than becoming aggressive when rabid, bats are weak and unable to fly. Any bat found on the ground is a sick bat. Do not touch it. It may bite in defense if you do. If necessary, use gloves to move it away from children and pets. Interestingly, antibodies found in healthy bats suggest that bats sometimes recover from rabies. Protection As people
are discovering how beneficial bats really are, they are eagerly
joining conservation efforts. These include learning how to exclude
bats from buildings without killing them, and putting up bat
houses to attract them—thus controlling insect populations
without using dangerous pesticides. These gentle mammals deserve
our protection—and we, in turn, benefit greatly from their
presence.
More bats...
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Colossal Cave Mountain Park
© 2003-2006 Colossal Cave Mountain Park, All Rights Reserved. |
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Pallid
Bats use more than one roost each day. Colossal Cave seems to
serve them as a day roost, for sleeping. At night, while out
hunting, they take their prey to other roosts where they feed
and rest between foraging trips. Photo taken at the Colossal Cave entrance.
found in the Cave, but seem to come no further
than a few feet into the entrances. Photo taken at the Colossal Cave entrance.
feeds mainly on the nectar and ripe fruit
of saguaros in late spring and early summer and on the nectar
of various agaves in late summer and early fall. So, the “Leptos”
(nicknamed from the species name, Leptonycteris curasoae),
like the Choeros, are pollinators of saguaros and agaves. Photo taken at
La Posta Quemada Ranch in Colossal Cave Mountain Park.
