Around 200,000 bats have invaded a town in North Queensland in Australia. People who live in Charters Towers are demanding action to deal with a situation they say is "the stuff of nightmares". Doctors say the bats pose no risk to the public's health. #bat #bats #batsofinstagram #wildlifeofinstagram #batsofaustralia @bbcnews Nearly 1/4 of all mammal species are bats. That’s around 1,000 kinds of bats! Bats are mammals. They are the only mammals that can fly. Bats are the slowest reproducing mammal on the earth for their size, most producing only one young (pup) per year. Vampire bats, which do feed on blood, account for only 3 of the world’s species of bats and live only in Latin America. Bats are not blind and many have excellent vision. Bats do not attack people. Bats are quite timid; however, they will defend themselves. The biggest health risk that people face from bats is their own fearful reaction to them. More people injure themselves in their frenzied escapes from bats swooping for insects than are ever harmed by them. Most bats are predators of night flying insects, like mosquitoes. Guano (bat droppings) makes excellent fertilizer. However, you should avoid using a bucket or deep container to catch the droppings under a roost. Bat pups may fall out of the house and become trapped inside the container. A single little brown bat can consume more than 1,000 mosquito sized insects in an hour. Consider that a modest colony of 75 bats can devour up to 75,000 insects in a single hour. A single chamber house of BCI design can hold a colony of 50 little brown bats; while larger nursery boxes (like the 4 chamber nursery box) can house hundreds. Bats have been known to live more than 30 years! Bats in some parts of the world can have wing spans up to 6 feet! In the U.S., the largest bat is the Western Mastiff with a wing span measuring in at 2 feet. Then there are some bats weighing less than a single penny. Most bats cannot take flight from the ground. They must drop 2 or 3 feet before they can fly. Bats do not hunt you down to jump in your hair and get tangled. I can only imagine some poor woman had a random encounter with a bat to start this rumor.
