International Bat Appreciation Day 🦇

International Bat Appreciation Day!! It is a day to know more about bats and why they are so critical for our world.

 

Why Are Bats Important?

Bats are not just creepy creatures that fly in the night. They do many good things. First, bats help to control insect populations. They eat many bugs, including mosquitoes. If we did not have bats, we would have many more flying bugs around us.

 

Also, Bats are useful in pollination. Others, like bees do the same thing with other flowers by carrying their pollen. Plants and fruits are essential for this. You can thank bats for pollinating many of our favorite foods, including bananas and avocados.

 

Bats also pollinate and disperse seeds. E.g. when bats eat fruit, they fly far away from the plant and drop seeds across the landscape This also produces new plants, if the birds poop out their seeds. This is beneficial for maintaining the health of forests and other areas.

 

Fun Facts About Bats

Bats are certainly interesting animals! It may come as a surprise to learn there are indeed 1,400 species of bats. They are present on every continent except Antarctica. There are many species of bats and they vary widely in size. Some are tiny as a thumb, others have wings that span the length of a car!

 

Bats: Bats use echolocation to see. And did you know they favorite food is mosquitos.— They use such sounds so these sound waves could repel from surfaces and guide them to search food without hitting something. And that ability to fly really well in the dark makes them great mosquitoes.

 

How Can You Help Bats?

Give Bats A Hand With The Perfect Environment Bats also feed on traditional insects and planting native flowers will help attract them, too. Bat Boxes, as we have talked about before, are a great way to provide bat habitat in your yard. It is also important to keep areas clean and refrain from using harmful chemicals around bats or their food.

 

In honor of this International Bat Appreciation Day, we hope you may enjoy spending a few moments learning about these intriguing animals. They do a lot to keep our planet clean, thus let us not forget them!