Austin’s awesome aeroBATS

By Isaac Braman-Ray, Gabe Tao, and Benjamin Grubert

As the day starts to set, the bats of the Ann W. Richards Bridge begin to wake. They flutter, as they ascend in a spiral. Then the sky erupts with the sound of their wings. A colony becomes a cloud, as the immense black swarm rises from their lair, as they begin their hunt for food.

The Richards Bridge on Congress Avenue in downtown Austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in the world. Millions of Brazilian free-tailed bats call the street home during the spring and summer. Most bats that roost under the water crossing are mothers, migrating from central Mexico to give birth to their young. At sunset, they take flight together to search for food, collectively eating over 10,000 pounds of insects every night.

Austin Batworks helps to protect bat colonies, selling wooden bat houses and working to raise awareness through workshops, explained Debbie Zent, founder of the non-profit.

“I’m fascinated by the variety of the way that they’ve adapted in the world to wherever they are,” Zent said.

Each species of bat has crazy adaptations, such as the ghost bat which has nearly transparent wings, or the horseshoe bat, which has crazy shaped ears to assist with hearing in all directions.

“Although the multitude of bats are all part of the same colony,” founder Dianne Odegard said, “each bat is special.”

They all have a unique way of thinking and interacting with other bats and their environment. The range in personality of the bats is vast, which means that each bat is special in their own way.

The mothers in maternity colonies can give birth to up to a million bats each year. Under the Congress bridge, about 650,000 mother bats that give birth to over 800,000 pups annually.

“During the summer as the pups begin to be born in June and July and begin to fly,” Zent said, “by the time August rolls around, you’ve got 1.5 million bats that’ll be coming out.”

Because of how many bats Austin has, we have to have organizations to care for them, such as Austin Bat Refuge, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of bats and preserving their presence in the world.

“It’s constantly interesting to see new bats,” Odegard said. “When you watch all of those bats fly out from a roost, you realize that every single one has a very distinct personality.”

Each pup, a baby bat, has a unique squeak to assist their mother in finding them. In addition to their squeak, they have a smell that allows the mother to locate them in the possibly millions of pups. When at a longer range, the mothers use special echolocation calls to find their babies.

“What’s fascinating about colonies is that when the mothers leave the roost to go hunting for insects and they have to come back to feed the pups,” Zent said, “they can find their pup in those millions of bats.”

There is a lot of fear surrounding bats due to the fact that they can carry diseases, Odegard explained, but this is a rare occurrence. People also have treatments for most of the diseases they can pass to us. Bats are fearful of humans and avoid us, so the risk of transmission is low.

“Bats are usually not rabid,” Odegard said. “A bat that you find on the ground is more likely to be sick, could also be injured. It could have a broken arm or broken fingers or any number of maybe a head injury, all kinds of things. Maybe they’re just dehydrated and need to be rehydrated and fed and then can be released. So the whole object of this rehabilitation that we do is to get them back out to the wild.”

With the efforts of organizations like Austin Bat Refuge and Austin Batworks, thousands of bats have been provided with shelter, food, and care.

Almost all of them have been able to return to the wild and live a full, healthy life – and those that aren’t able to return to the wild live in an amazing bat home.

“I think one of my reasons for working with bats has to do with them being a creature that is often maligned by people as well as misunderstood,” Odegard said. “I’m rooting for the underdog.”