Photo by Sally Shan
In Central Texas, the evening light began to fade, and a spectacular performance began to take shape at the mouth of bracken Bat Cave, outside San Antonio. Several brave bat scouts flew into the twilight, patrolled and quickly withdrew. A few minutes later, a small group of bats took the lead and flew out, and the bat stream was first like a stream, and then like a flood.
Photo by Karine Aigner
For the next three hours, tens of millions of bat swarms sprang up at the mouth of the cave, and one bat tornado after another formed, rising and rising, heading for the wind, and the bat swarms in the sky were like black clouds, which was extremely spectacular.
Photo by Sally Shan
Blanken Cave is home to the densest number of mammals on Earth. From March to October, as fifteen to twenty million Mexican free-tailed bats fly out of it, huge bat eddies repeat themselves every evening.
Female free-tailed bats generally produce one offspring per year, and most of them are concentrated in June. Newborn bats are sent to a special nursery in the cave, while the mother bat rests in another place. Since there are tens of millions of newborn bats, the nursery is extremely crowded and chaotic, and there are sometimes as many as 5,000 small bats crowded on the cave wall per square meter.
In such a crowded place, bat mothers can still accurately find her baby to feed, and it must be said that this is a magical skill!
These bats consume up to 200 tons of insects per night, the vast majority of which are crop pests such as cotton bollworms and armyworm moths. Just one such bat can eat in one night to prevent the production of more than 50,000 moth eggs. To feed bats- young children born in early summer, mother bats gobble up and consume one-half to three-quarters of their body weight each night to feed on insects. The mother bat's terrible appetite gave central Texas an important benefit: widespread insect suppression. When Blanken bats forage each night, they alone can eat 140 tons of flying beetles, flying ants and moths. They are particularly fond of common agricultural pests; one study showed bats save cotton growers in the region nearly $800,000 worth of pesticides and crop damage each year.
Fran Hutchins clutched one of his instructional billboards. As a director of the International Bat Conservation Organization, he monitors caves and explains to visitors the life and habits of the Mexican free-tailed bat. Photo by Karine Aigner
In early 2013, some developers wanted to build a dense suburban development on 1,521 acres adjacent to Blanken Cave, with 10,000 residents living in the area. This is not good news for bats. Bat Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy launched a campaign to protect Blanken Cave.
Eventually, in late 2014, under public pressure, the developer pulled out of the deal and, with the help of Bat Conservation International, a coalition of local and federal agencies and private fundraisers, The Nature Conservancy bought the land. The deal protects the local city's groundwater, the endangered gold-cheeked black-backed forest warbler habitat and this bat cave. Now, with the caves protected for a long time, the future of the bats is safe.
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