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 The Cajuns call them souris-chaude and most people find them repugnant. Though bats are among our most marvelous native citizens, locals believe they will surely become entangled in their hair, infest their homes with bedbugs, and give them rabies. The first two beliefs are absolutely false, and rabid bats are virtually unheard of in our area (though rabies is a serious issue and live bats should be handled with extreme care!).
Of the nine species of bats living in the New Orleans area, six are known to use colonial roosting sites. The other three (the hairy-tailed bats) roost singly in trees or Spanish moss. Because the latter are most likely to be discovered in people’s yards, they are the most frequently observed species. However, more concern is shown for the types that congregate in attics and living spaces because they may noisily squeak during the day, produce a musty odor, and otherwise disturb the sanctity of the home.Bats are extremely important in the overall environmental scheme of things. Our local species are voracious insectivores, being the primary consumers of nocturnal flying insects. One colony of free-tailed bats in Texas is estimated to eat a quarter of a million pounds of insects per night! Bats are used extensively in research, from the testing of drugs to developing navigational aids for the blind. Their use of echolocation has lead to many discoveries in human use of sonar. Bat guano is one of the most important sources of fertilizer in developing countries. It is estimated that one third of the world’s black and white pepper gets its nourishment in this manner. All of these are dwarfed, however, when one considers bat pollination of human foods and other useful plant-derived items.
All in all, bats are possibly worth billions of dollars to humans annually, but when one watches the acrobatic, fluttering marvel of a bat in flight, all values beyond aesthetics fade into the night.
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