Bats Are Not For Snuggles: You and Nature’s Cutest Insectivores
For the last two months, my Twitter feed has been a very long series of requests for people to not touch bats, so, in celebration of Halloween and #BatWeek, I’m going to talk about how you should (and should not) interact with one of nature’s cutest creations.
I love how adorable bats are and am constantly amazed at how important they are to our natural environment. Their noses are incredible feats of evolution and wiggle like they don’t even care that my heart can hardly bear it. That said, they're not safe for humans to touch without special training and personal protective equipment.
While clearly adorable and so tempting, you should not snuggle even these baby bats
It’s also no secret that I really, truly loathe mosquitos after the little suckers gave me dengue in 2015 while I was working in Bangladesh. Bats, in all their kindness, snack on all the mosquitos they can find, making the world a safer place for all of us. More than just helping to keep the dengue (and Zika, malaria, Yellow Fever, and West Nile Virus!) away, they also pollinate plants while they gobble up tasty fruits and distribute plant seeds in their tiny bat poops. Our little friends are a keystone species and we should all be grateful for their fuzzy presence in our communities. Sadly, approximately 40% of the United States’ bat species are threatened or endangered. At the end of this piece, I’ll have some concrete ideas for ways that you can help (safely!) support the bats in your community.
Please Don’t Touch Bats
I love to snuggle tiny fuzzy mammals (especially cats), but bats are not safe snuggle partners. Public health practitioners talk a lot about how “bats are special,” meaning that they carry more diseases that affect humans (“zoonotic diseases”) than other mammals do. Aside from rabies, bats also carry coronaviruses (the virus family that also includes SARS and MERS), hantaviruses (sometimes fatal respiratory viruses), and filoviruses (hemorrhagic fevers like Marburg Virus and Ebola). The Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa and terrified the United States has been linked to a small child playing with a bat. Eating bat bushmeat (meat from wild animals) has also been linked with the spread of the virus, which makes life more difficult for populations that rely on bushmeat as an important nutritional and economic staple.
Most bats eat fruit or insects and have no interest in eating you
The vast majority of bats eat fruit or insects and have no interest in spending time with you, so when bats are behaving bizarrely or aggressively, doctors and scientists start to worry that it might be ill. Sometimes the contact is very casual (a bat brushes past you when you open a seldom-used attic), but sometimes the touch is more dangerous (petting the bat). The risk of contracting rabies is very low in most wealthy countries, but there is still risk and, when you touch a bat, it can be very challenging for medical providers and your local health department to be absolutely certain that you weren’t bitten and didn’t have any contact with its blood or saliva.
Bats don't need brushing. They need space.
If we can’t be certain that you weren’t bitten (or if you were and we can’t test the bat), your doctor may need to treat you for rabies exposure with post-exposure prophylaxis (the actual treatment you get is called “human rabies immune globulin”). You’ll receive a 4 dose series of intramuscular shots (in your upper arm muscle for adults and in the thigh muscle for young children). It’s not fun and is very expensive (Sanofi Pasteur offers assistance for uninsured and underinsured patients). There is also a 3 dose rabies vaccine series that costs around $900 in the United States and is a very pretty shade of magenta. If you have received the rabies vaccine series, are not immunocompromised, and are later exposed to rabies, you will likely receive two follow up doses of the vaccine in lieu of the post-exposed prophylaxis.
If you have contact with a bat and it is determined that the bat needs to be tested for rabies, the test requires that the bat be euthanised so we can take a tissue sample from the bat’s brain. It’s a sad thing when a family needs to be treated and/or a bat needs to die because there was completely preventable contact. We can help protect bats from needing to be tested for rabies by taking simple precautions to avoid contact.
What Can You Do
Potential bat entry points to your warm and dry home
Bats are, as we’ve now discussed, pretty fantastic and very resourceful in finding a safe, warm place to hibernate in winter and birth their pups in spring. Your attic (if you have one) would probably be very attractive for them, but you can seal up common entry points (see helpful image of common bat entry points) and create spaces for bats to roost in your community that will be safer for you and your sky puppy friends. Bat droppings (guano) may not be particularly pleasant, but they don't spread rabies. However, you should still follow approved public health guidelines for cleaning them because they can carry another nasty infection called histoplasmosis.
Once you’ve sealed up your home, you can give bats an alternative cozy place to sleep and raise their babies. The National wildlife Federation (NWF) has some handy tips for building a bat house. Your bat house should:
get lots of sun
be caulked on the inside to keep it warm and dry
be at least 15 feet above the ground,
be near a water source,
not be on a tree (bats have a harder time getting into bat houses that are mounted on trees and there is a greater risk of predators attacking them when they can reach the bat house easily), and
be away from spaces where children might play and accidentally come into contact with the bats.
If building a bat house isn’t your thing, you can also just buy one from a group like the Audubon Society. Once you have mounted your fantastic new bat house, make sure that you stay away from it to avoid contact with the bats and to help them feel safe in their new home
You can learn more about bats from local bat conservation groups like Bats Northwest, particularly if they host bat walks to explore bats in your area.
You can also help keep bats safe and healthy in your community by reducing your use of insecticides (chemical insecticides can also poison the bat friends who eat the affected bugs) and educating others in your community on how wonderful bats are (but that they're not to be touched).
