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Dispelling Myths About BatsThrough research, education, community involvement, andconservation efforts in Mexico and the United States, the stigma surrounding these mysterious and oftenmisunderstood creatures is being reversed

by Chris Hardman

In small classrooms throughout NorthernMexico, school children are singing the praisesof Marcelo, the Mexican free-tailed bat. On theother side of the border in the southern part ofthe United States, children are devoted toFrankie, the Brazilian free-tailed bat. Both batslive in both countries; they spend the winter inMexico and they summer in the United States.

And although they contribute greatly to the agricul-tural economy of each country, their presence sparksheated debates and sometimes violence. What manyadults have yet to learn, however, these school chil-dren already know: bats are an essential part of theenvironment that directly benefit humans. They arethe farmer’s silent helpers, pollinating cash crops andproviding pest control.

Marcelo came from the imagination of LauraNavarro, Education Coordinator for the Mexicannon-governmental organization, the Bat ConservationProgram (PCMM). With her bilingual children’s bookfeaturing Marcelo the friendly bat, Navarro chal-lenges Mexican myths and superstitions by portray-ing bats as the peaceful, family-oriented mammalsthey are. Because Navarro believes that childrenlearn better when they have an emotional attach-ment to a subject, she treats bats as a kind of pet ormascot and writes lively stories about them. “I thinkthat information is not the [only] way to change. We need to go deeper,” she explains.

Popular culture in Mexico—as in other countriesof the Americas—portrays bats as blood-suckingvampires that prey on innocent people while theysleep. In the past, fear of these mysterious nightcreatures has led people to burn or dynamite thecaves where they roost, killing millions of them. “It [was] the same everywhere,” explains Navarro,“[people] think they are vampires.” Lack of under-standing and the ensuing violence promptedMexico’s foremost bat scientist Rodrigo Medellín tofound PCMM in 1994. “When you start working withsomething like bats, that have an undeserved, unfairbad reputation, you have to start by improving thebats’ image,” Medellín says. As a professor at theEcology Institute at the National AutonomousUniversity of Mexico (UNAM), Medellín had theresources and background to develop education-based programs that would change the image of batsin the eyes of the Mexican people.

Early on, Medellín and other PCMM staffwere able to see how well their educa-tional programs were working. In 1995,when the legend of the chupacabras—

a story about a creature that killed goatsand sheep by sucking their blood—spreadfrom Puerto Rico to Mexico, many caveswere burned as people tried to protectthemselves from the mythical beast. At thesame time, PCMM had launched its pilotprogram at one of the most important batcaves in Mexico, Cueva de la Boca, locatednear Monterrey in Northern Mexico. The

legendary Cueva de la Boca used to be thehome of one of the largest populations ofMexican free-tailed bats in the world, butdue to habitat loss and human disturbance,the once great population of twenty milliondropped to nearly one million.

During the chupacabras scare, some ofthe villagers who lived near Cueva de laBoca decided that the chupacabras wasliving in Mexico inside of the cave. Theirfear spread throughout the community anda group set out to destroy the cave.“Picture a mob in a Frankenstein movie,”Medellín explains. At the entrance to thecave, however, the angry adults were

activities that offer even more informationabout bats. In addition, PCMM works withthe adults in the community to connecttheir lives to the bats’ well being. Adultscan take PCMM-run training sessions tobecome bat cave tour guides or learn howto start a business making and selling bat-related handicrafts to tourists. PCMMmakes a long-term commitment to thecommunities they work with. After the ini-tial three to four month visit, PCMM willreturn to the community at least once ayear to replenish supplies and provideadditional support.

PCMM visits hundreds of other commu-nities through a series of radio showsNavarro created called Aventuras al vuelo[Adventures in Flight]. Beginning withMarcelo, PCMM produced twenty 15-minute shows with stories about batsincluding Unos tipos de pelos [HairyGuys]; Los poderes del eco [The Powers ofEcho]; Las mamás y los cachorros[Mothers and their Babies]; LosQuiróptero frutillón [The Fruit-eating

Chiropteran]; Cuarteles secretos [SecretBarracks], Guaridas y refugios [Dens andRefuges]; Chupacabras [The Goat Killer];and Abuelita de Batman [Batman’sGrandmother]. The award-wining seriesappeals to a variety of ages and is availableto anyone with a radio. PCMM also pro-duced an exhibit titled “Bats, A Myth inour Culture” that has traveled throughoutthe country. Housed in town halls or otherpublic buildings, the exhibit is presentedfree of charge. Medellín estimates that inthe past sixteen years, more than 200,000people have participated in some aspect ofPCMM’s educational programs.

stopped by the children in the communitywho had completed PCMM’s educationalprogram. The children told the adults thatMarcelo the bat lived in that cave and hewas with his family and that bats help peo-ple. These passionate children, who haddeveloped an emotional attachment tobats, were able to convince the adults notto kill the bat colony within.

“We are building a network of childrenand schools that are connected by theirinterest in protecting bats,” Medellínexplains. He says that when PCMM returnsto a community to start a new group ofstudents, they find that the new groupalready knows quite a bit about bats. Theonly explanation, he believes, is that thefirst generation of students who camethrough their program taught the youngerchildren about bats. “We have been work-ing on caves for a long time, and now wecan see the changes,” Navarro says.PCMM’s influence in the classroomincreased dramatically eight years agowhen they started educating the country’s

future schoolteachers on bat science at theBenemérita National Teachers’ School.

The bad reputation of bats in Mexicocan be traced to two causes: real vampirebats, and the story of Dracula. Navarro,who is working on her doctorate at UNAM,explains that people in pre-Colombiantimes had neutral feelings toward bats;they were part of the landscape and wereneither good nor bad. When the conquista-dors came to the Mexico, they were star-tled by the small creatures that wouldswoop down and suck blood from theirhorses. The famed Spanish chroniclerBernal Díaz del Castillo wrote about this

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To implement their strategy of conser-vation through education, PCMM programsbegin in the classroom and then spread tothe rest of the community. Over the years,PCMM has worked with approximately 70of the communities that live near 22 of themost important bat caves in Mexico. Cave-dwelling animals that only come out at

Marcelo, the Mexican free-tailedbat, opposite top, and his UnitedStates counterpart, Frankie, theBrazilian free-tailed bat, above,help schoolchildren identify withbats. Some of the activities oftheir classroom conservationefforts include examining stuffedbats, opposite bottom, andbuilding their own friendly batkits, opposite center. RodrigoMedellín, left, holding a Mexicanlong-tongued bat, is helping tochange the bat’s negative imageby teaching about the importanceof bats in everyday life

Overleaf: Bats are importantpollinators and seed dispersers

Mexican school children aresinging the praises ofMarcelo, the Mexican free-tailed bat . . . in the United States, children are devoted to Frankie, the Brazilian free-tailed bat

night are difficult for most people to see,and as a result, human residents know little about them. Navarro says she has metmany people who think bats are mice orbirds. “What we do in the program is to try to give them information about the real natural history of the species,” she explains.

Since publishing Marcelo the Bat in1997, Navarro and her partner, Mexicanartist Juan Sebastián, have published sixmore bilingual children’s books about bats.Simple text and friendly drawings sparkthe reader’s imagination as they learnabout bat family life where mothers nursetheir babies and colonies migrate together

as one big group. Loveable bats, withnames like Valentín, Don Sabino,Barbarita, and Lucia, draw the studentsinto the bats’ life in a way they can relateto by showing them as family memberswho experience fear and happiness. Eachbook highlights a different type of bat—afruit eater or a vampire—and features astory set in the geographic area the readerlives in.

The books are supplemented by lessonplans, classroom games, and hands-on

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first encounter in his book A True Historyof the Conquest of New Spain. Some 300years later in 1897, an Irish novelist namedBram Stoker came across Díaz’s chroniclesand incorporated the bat into the vampiremyth. After Stoker wrote the novelDracula, popular culture began to connectbats with vampires and assign them char-acteristics of evil and darkness.

One of the lessons PCMM teaches is howimportant bats are to agriculture inMexico. In desert areas, bats—includingthe lesser long-nosed bat and the Mexicanlong-tongued bat—are the primary pollina-tors of one of Mexico’s most importantcash crops: agave. Bats feed on nectarfrom agave plants, and as they travel fromplant to plant, they spread the pollengrains that stick to their fur to the nextplant they visit. “The interdependencebetween bats and agaves is so strong thatone might not be able to survive withoutthe other,” wrote bat researchers Don E.Wilson and Héctor Arita in an article forBat Conservation International. Agaves,which are used to make tequila and to har-vest henequen fibers, have been an impor-tant part of Mexico’s economy and culturesince pre-Colombian times. In addition toagave plants, researchers estimate thatmore than 300 types of fruits rely on batsfor pollination including mangoes, bananas,and guavas.

While conservationists in Mexico havemade progress in improving the rep-utation of bats, their counterparts inthe United States have worked on

proving how valuable bats are to people. Inaddition to pollination, bats perform anoth-er agricultural service: pest control. Everysummer millions of free-tailed bats journeyfrom their caves in Mexico to caves in thesouthern United States where they willgive birth to and take care of one pup perfemale. The most popular destination forthe summering bats is the Winter Gardenagricultural region of Texas—a trianglebetween San Antonio, Laredo, and EaglePass.

With 697,950 acres of cropland in pro-duction, the farmers of Winter Gardengrow nearly $350 million worth of vegeta-bles, cotton, and livestock. In the summer,the crops are plagued by the larvae of thefarmers’ worst enemy: the corn ear wormmoth. Also known as the tomato fruitworm and the cotton bollworm, corn earworm larvae—along with other agriculturalpests—cost American farmers nearly onebillion dollars a year in lost crops and pesti-cide expenses. If it weren’t for the bats,researchers say, that amount would be sig-nificantly higher.

When the bats migrate to the UnitedStates from Mexico, they become part of acolony of 100 million bats that hunt nightly

for moths, beetles, and other insects.Female bats are especially hungry aftergiving birth in June, and they will maintainthat hearty appetite for the next six weekswhile they nurse their young. Researchersestimate that these nursing mothers willeat more than 70 percent of their bodyweight in insects each night, which meansthat a colony of 100 million bats can eat 2 million pounds of insects at a time. “Wecall it an ecosystem service,” explains GaryMcCracken, a evolutionary biology profes-sor at the University of Tennessee. Fromresearch conducted in the field,McCracken was able to determine thatduring most of the summer, adult mothsmake up 30 to 40 percent of the bat’s diet,and when the moths migrate from Mexicointo Texas, the moths make up 90 percentof the bats’ diet.

McCracken and his colleagues at BostonUniversity, the US Department ofAgriculture and the Texas Parks andWildlife Department are working on calcu-lating what monetary impact the bats haveon farmers. “The economists call it anavoided cost,” explains John K. Westbrook,a research developer for the USDepartment of Agriculture. “It is at leastthe amount of one or two pesticide appli-cations a year.” That includes the cost ofthe chemical and the labor to apply it. Inaddition, researchers say that the bats

might delay the farm-ers’ need to apply pes-ticides and that Texasbats are helping thefarmers in the north-ern states and Canadaas well. “They arereducing the numberof insect migrants thatwould infest fields farther north during the growing season,”Westbrook explains.

For corn, the cyclebegins in spring whenadult moths lay theireggs on corn silkbefore the plants beginto bear fruit. Usingcorn as a nursery plant, one female mothcan lay up to 1,000 eggs on 1,000 ears ofcorn per season. After the larva hatches, itcrawls under the husk and feeds on thetender corn kernels at the top of the earwhich exposes the rest of the ear to dis-ease and molds. For a farmer trying to sellsweet corn, signs of damage or a chanceencounter with a live worm can cut into asmuch as 50 percent of his profits.

Once the larva leaves the corn to bur-row into the soil and begin the process ofturning into a moth, the damage hasalready been done. Usually in July the

A colony of lesser long-nosed bats,opposite, groom pollen from their

faces after returning to their cave toroost. The Mexican free-tailed bat,top, is essential in controlling theinsect/pest populations in large

agricultural areas of Mexico and theUnited States. Evolutionary biologistGary McCracken, above, is workingwith wildlife conservation groupswho are studying the impact that

bats have on farmers and theirproducts

When you start workingwith something like abat,that have anundeserved, unfair badreputation, you have tostart by improving thebats’s image

moths will emergefrom the soil at anastounding rate of40,000 per acre. Thebats, who are highly-skilled hunters withinsatiable appetites,will feast on thesemoths, preventingthem from reproduc-ing again.

D i s s e m i n a t i n gtruthful informationabout bats is a full-time job for conserva-tionists in the UnitedStates, where mythsabout bats are hand-ed down from one

generation to the next. One of most prolif-ic bat promoting organizations in theworld is Bat Conservation International(BCI) of Austin, Texas. Founded in 1982by world-renown bat conservationistMerlin Tuttle, BCI has spearheaded educational and research projects in theUnited States and abroad for nearly threedecades. They publish the world’s onlymagazine devoted exclusively to bats, andthey provide financial support toresearchers and partner with internationalconservation organizations includingPCMM.

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Like the children in Mexico, schoolchildren in the United States havedeveloped an attachment to a bilingualmascot who stars in an educationalchildren’s book. Young readers followFrankie the Brazilian free-tailed bat’sadventures as she searches for food,migrates between the two countries andbecomes a mother. Texas Parks andWildlife Department educators NytaHensley and Patricia Morton wrote thebook, and a panel of scientists includingJohn Westbrook and Gary McCrackenserved on a review panel for the book. In2007, with funding from the NationalScience Foundation, the Texas Parks andWildlife Department distributed 37,000copies of the book to schools throughoutTexas and in Mexico.

“If adults could only see the worldthrough the eyes of children, they couldrelive the wonderment and excitement ofdiscovery they too once experienced intheir youth,” wrote Boston UniversityProfessor Thomas Kunz in theintroduction to Frankie the Free-tailedBat. “It tells a delightful story, based onscientific discoveries, that not onlyimparts new knowledge about thisfascinating bat species to young readers,but also contains new information that willbe of interest to a broader audience—thatthis species and others like it are valuablemembers of our environment that need tobe protected.” 1

Chris Hardman is a regular contributorto Américas.

The Organization of American States isalso supporting research and capacitybuilding in bat ecology and managementthrough the Western HemisphereMigratory Species Initiative (WHMSI).Funded by the OAS–Special MultilateralFund of the Inter-American Council forIntegral Development (FEMCIDI), projectsare building upon existing WHMSI effortsto significantly enhance the conservation ofshared migratory species throughout theAmericas by strengthening institutional andhuman capacity, political commitment,international cooperation, and public-pri-vate partnerships at regional, national andlocal levels. The Latin American Networkfor Bat Conservation supports the PCMMprogram through its project “Endangeredand Migratory Bats in Latin America.”

Each night near twilight, millions ofMexican free-tailed bats emerge fromBracken Cave, near San Antonio, Texas, above, making it the largestconcentration of mammals on theplanet. Right: Rodrigo Medellín standsoutside Pinacate Cave in the MexicanSonora Dessert, home to thousands oflesser long-nosed bats. Medellín was anAssociate Laureate in Rolex’s Award forEnterprise program in 2008. In additionto debunking myths surrounding bats,he will be able to use the prize moneyfrom the award to further his batconservation efforts in Mexico, whichincludes bat cave preservation

Researchers estimate thatthese nursing mothers willeat more than 70 percentof their body weight ininsects each night

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