In Simple Terms
Bats do much more than fly around at night. They help plants and farms, and some live surprisingly long lives for such small animals. By studying how bats find food, share it, and stay healthy, scientists may learn things that matter to people, too.
Beyond the Myths
Bats are more than spooky creatures from nighttime stories. They can fly, help plants and farmers, and some live for an unusually long time for their size. Their behavior is remarkable, from finding prey by sound to feeding a hungry member of their group. Understanding bats could benefit both nature and people.
When darkness falls, small wings stir in the sky, carrying bats between trees and fields in ways that are hard to see. Popular culture has linked bats with horror and vampires, perhaps because of the habits of some species and the unusual appearance of others. But that image tells only a small part of the story: bats have lived on Earth for more than 50 million years and adapted to a wide range of habitats and diets.
Bats live on every continent except Antarctica, and they are far from a uniform group. Some hunt insects, some feed on flower nectar, and others eat fish or frogs; a few drink blood. Along with their physical abilities and social behavior, this variety highlights the important roles bats play in natural ecosystems—and raises scientific questions that may help us understand aging and disease.
Wings Built for the Dark
Bats are the only mammals capable of true, powered flight. That sets them apart from animals that can glide through the air but cannot flap wings to fly in the same way. Flight gives bats a way to find food and travel at night. Many species also use echolocation: they make sounds and interpret the echoes to build a picture of their surroundings.
Using sound to find your way may sound simple, but for bats it serves a precise practical purpose. Echoes help them sense what is around them as they move and locate small prey that would be difficult to see in the dark. Some bats go further than simply detecting movement: they listen to the calls of other animals and use those sounds to help them hunt. A prey animal’s call is not just background noise; it can reveal where the animal is and help the bat judge whether it is a suitable target.
Bats also benefit people, even when their contributions go largely unnoticed. Insect-eating species reduce insect populations, including mosquitoes, and provide a service worth billions of dollars each year to farmers around the world. Nectar-feeding bats, meanwhile, help pollinate tropical plants. As they forage at night, bats take part in a web of relationships that supports agriculture and helps some plants reproduce.
More Diverse Than Their Reputation Suggests
About 1,500 bat species are known around the world, and that number could grow as scientists learn more and improve how species are classified. Among mammals, only rodents have more species than bats. This remarkable diversity reflects a wide range of lifestyles and diets: some bats drink blood, others feed on nectar, many hunt insects, and still others eat fish or frogs.
That variety is why it makes little sense to judge all bats by a single species. The existence of vampire bats does not mean that blood-feeding is common across the group; most bat species do not eat this way. Even among bats that feed on other animals, the ways they find and handle food differ. Each species faces distinct challenges shaped by its diet and the environment it lives in.
One striking example is the fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, which feeds on frogs. Not every frog makes a safe meal: some are poisonous, and others may be large enough to pose a danger to the hunter. The bat therefore listens for the loud mating calls frogs make at night. The calls help it locate prey and may also give it clues it can use to judge the frog’s size or whether it is poisonous.
With this strategy, the bat turns a signal from its prey into a hunting tool. It does not merely find the source of a sound; it uses the sound to assess what it may be up against before attacking. The example shows how an animal’s senses can adapt to its needs: a frog’s call, which helps frogs communicate with others of their kind, can also serve as a clue for a nearby predator.
A Long Life in a Small Body
In many animals, lifespan is linked to body size. Whales and elephants, for instance, tend to live longer than smaller animals such as mice and shrews. Bats break that pattern. They are among the smallest mammals, yet some species can live for decades. Researchers sometimes describe them as exceptionally long-lived for their body size.
Scientists are interested in more than simply recording impressive lifespans. They are investigating how bats live so long, including their ability to repair DNA and their ability to carry viruses without becoming ill. This does not mean bats never get sick. Rather, understanding their biology may help explain how their bodies handle certain challenges differently from those of other animals.
Researcher Emma Teeling, a professor and founder of the Centre for Irish Bat Research at University College Dublin, studies these traits as part of a broader effort to understand aging. The aim is not to assume that what happens in bats can be transferred directly to people. Instead, comparing species may reveal mechanisms worth investigating and could open new lines of inquiry into how cells are maintained and protected from damage over time.
Genetic Clues to the Past
Bats reveal more than how they live today. Their DNA can also help scientists reconstruct their evolutionary history. In September, an international team of more than 130 scientists published a study in Nature based on comparisons of genomes across all 21 bat families. By combining genetic information with evidence from fossils, the researchers developed a new picture of where bats originated.
The findings suggest that bats most likely first appeared in Europe, then spread to Africa and from there to other parts of the world. Their place of origin has been debated, with different regions proposed, including North America. Combining genetic and fossil evidence matters because each kind of evidence adds a different piece to the picture: DNA helps researchers compare how species are related, while fossils show where and when their ancestors lived.
The findings do not mean that every detail of bats’ journey across continents is now known, but they do change the prevailing picture of where their geographic history began. They also show the value of studying an entire group of families instead of relying on only a handful of species. A broader comparison gives scientists a better chance of understanding how bat lineages are related, branched apart, and spread over time.
Scents for Recognition and Communication
Some bats produce distinctive smells, a trait that is not easy to spot. A review published in 2021 in Mammal Review reported that about 9% of bat species known so far have glands or other structures that produce scents. The researchers cautioned, however, that this subject has received little study, so the current percentage may not capture the full range of what bats can do.
Male fringe-lipped bats offer a clear example. They apply a golden-colored substance with a strong, musky smell to their forearms. The scent may help attract females. This behavior adds another dimension to bat life, showing that communication and mating can depend on chemical signals that humans may not readily notice, alongside the sounds bats hear and produce.
Blood as Rare Food—and a Lifesaving Share
Vampire bats loom large in the popular imagination, but they represent only one small part of bat diversity. When the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, feeds on a bird or mammal, it makes a small wound in the animal’s skin and laps up the blood. Its saliva contains an anticoagulant, a substance that keeps the blood from clotting quickly while the bat feeds.
This substance has attracted medical interest because preventing clotting could be useful in treating the clots that cause strokes. Scientists explored whether it might be used in a treatment that limits clotting while reducing the risk of bleeding in the brain. Development stalled about a decade ago after results proved insufficiently encouraging. Still, a recent review concluded that the idea remains worth considering—a reminder that finding an interesting compound does not, by itself, guarantee a successful medicine.
One unusual example of social behavior in these bats is how they help a hungry group member. A vampire bat may die if it goes about two nights without a meal, because it does not have enough energy reserves to wait much longer. Research suggests that other members of its colony may provide food by bringing up blood they have consumed and sharing it.
Sharing food costs the bat that gives it up, but it may save a neighbor’s life. The behavior is a reminder that survival does not always depend on an individual alone: in some animal societies, cooperation can make the difference between life and death. At the same time, this behavior should not be treated as typical of all bats; it has been documented in the social lives of vampire bats.
The Bottom Line
Bats bring together traits that may seem unrelated. They are the only mammals capable of true flight, some navigate by echolocation, and they play important roles in controlling insects and pollinating plants. The group includes about 1,500 species with varied diets and behaviors, from a bat that listens for frog calls to locate prey to species that share food within a colony.
Bats also raise scientific questions that reach beyond their own world. How can a small animal live for decades? What might we learn from its ability to repair DNA or live with viruses? And what can genes and fossils together tell us about its history? These questions do not make bats superanimals, but they show why studying them matters. Beyond the myths of horror, bats are an important part of nature and a source of questions that could deepen human knowledge.