Bats in Austin, TX

Let's dive in this blog, people!

I just got back from a weekend in Austin, TX, which was my first time there.
What I mean by weekend is actually my two days off, not so much Saturday and Sunday, but actually Monday and Tuesday, as it goes for theatre people.
My wonderful boyfriend and I went to Austin for the first time, and had a really good time. Of course, I knew of Austin as the music capital of the world, which sounds good to any musician I'm sure, but I was really surprised when my boyfriend and I went on a sunset boat cruise that turned unto a bat cruise. It turns out that Austin is the most populated urban environment of the world. Not just Texas, not just the US, but actually the world. We had a really cool young tour guide, that happened to be a biology major at Texas University in Austin, that had answers to all of our questions. It turns out that Austin did not have bats until one of their bridges had to be reinforced, which ended up creating gaps under it of perfect build for bats habitats.

Bats started to move in the city, which the Austin population wanted to get rid of so much that they had petitions against it because they thought that bats would bring along disease. However, that particular kind of bats that lived in the city are small Mexican bats, that are only dangerous if dead and on the ground, and healthy if alive and flying (in other words, it's best not to pick them up to take care of them if found on the street). They are about 1.5 million of them in Austin and people in the city nowadays love them.

They come out of the 1st st. bridge at sunset, flying away from the sun. The population of bats is made of mothers and their newly grown children, while the fathers stay in Mexico. The bats are best seen between May and October I believe, before going back to Mexico. They fly out to get some food, which has to be one third of their body weight. They eat bugs, which was one of the arguments used to make the population of Austin accept them in their city. The best hunters are back to the bridge faster and get the best spot to stay at under the east side of the bridge, while the worst ones are stuck under the middle of the bridge, having to leave it first at sunset, showing the way to the rest of the bats.

They all fly out at the same in a flock before finding their own way, which is the safest way to be for them. When the baby bats are still young, the mothers have to get up to their full body weight to be able to nurse their little one, while their baby stay under the bridge until they learn how to fly. Once the mother comes back, she finds her own baby out of the thousands of babies left under the bridge. If the mother dies, no other bat will take care of the baby bat, and it will die along with its mother.

This was definitely something unexpected and one of the best parts of our visit in Austin.
Check it out when you go!

(Photo from www.moonbattery.com/.../11/ann_richards_ge.html)