Bat Facts

A baby bat can weigh up to 30% of its mother's weight at birth. This is equivalent to a 120-lb. woman delivering a 40-lb. baby!

A Malayan naked free-tail bat can emit an echolocation call of 145 decibels. That is equivalent to a jet airplane at takeoff.

Some echolocating bats shut their ears "off" up to 200 times a second in order not to deafen themselves with their own calls. They must then turn their ears back "on" up to 200 times a second in order to hear the incoming echo.

Bats can live 30 years or longer. The record for longevity in the wild is held by two brown bats (Myotis lucifigus) in Canada that lived more than 42 years.

Bats vary in size from the tiny Kitti's hog-nose bat of Thailand, which weighs less than a penny, to the Indian flying fox of India, with an average wingspan of 6 feet. Most of the world's bats are so small they could be mailed with one first-class stamp.

Hoary bats have flown from the mainland of North America to Hawaii, a distance of almost 3,000 miles over open ocean. These incredible flyers are now Hawaii's only indigenous land mammal and are listed as endangered.

Four hundred fifty cash crops around the world depend on bats for pollination and/or seed dispersal.

Up to 98% of the seeds dropped in cleared areas in tropical rainforests are dispersed by bats, making these animals critical to tropical reforestation efforts.