Bat Week may be wrapping up on Halloween, but Oklahoma’s full of year-round opportunities to see and learn more about these fascinating night-time creatures.
Bats are both more common and less fearsome – in addition to being more helpful to humans – than commonly realized. Some two dozen species of bats have been recorded in Oklahoma. The state even recognizes one of them, the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis), as Oklahoma’s official flying mammal.
Fly it can, too – at altitudes above 10,000 feet, and it has been clocked at nearly 100 miles an hour, making it the fastest flying creature – mammal or otherwise – known to science. (Some birds can go faster, but only in a dive.) Like the better-known monarch butterfly, though, this species is migratory; by the time you read this, it’s likely left the state to spend the winter in warmer climes.
While many people think of bats as blood-suckers, only three of the more than 1,400 species of bats worldwide drink animal blood. Most of the North American kinds feed on insects, eating up to their own body weight every night. (Think how many more mosquito bites we might suffer, without bats around to trim their numbers!)
In addition to keeping insects in check, many bat species play prominent roles in pollinating crops. Fruit-feeding species are also natural reforesters, helping plants disperse their seeds by dropping them in guano mid-flight.
Oklahoma’s prime bat-viewing locations include Alabaster Caverns State Park, which offers guided cave tours as well as spelunking permits, and the University of Central Oklahoma’s Selman Living Laboratory, home to the largest known hibernating population of Cave Myotis (Myotis velifer).
Both these locations limit human interaction with bats. For example, at Alabaster Caverns, spelunking is closed from October through April, during the bats’ hibernation period. Such restrictions are needed to help protect bat populations against the continued spread of the fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome.
You can also enjoy bats’ many benefits from the comfort of your own home, by putting up bat boxes in the vicinity of your house and garden.
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