What would you say if you had to guess where the largest bat colony on earth is? Far in the outback of Australia? High in the mountains of China? Deep in the jungles of the Amazon? Those were my answers, and they’re all wrong. Nope. The largest bat colony in the world is right outside of San Antonio, Texas in the Bracken Bat Cave. When I found that out it knocked my socks off.

The property surrounding the bat cave was bought by the Nature Conservancy and is closed to the public except at certain times. Here are some fun facts from TNC’s website about the bats in the Bracken Cave:

• There are roughly 15 million Mexican free-tailed bats in the cave. It’s the largest single group of mammals on earth.
• This group of bats will eat 140 tons of insects every night! That’s the same weight as 28 African bush elephants.
• The bat’s emergence each night is so dense that it can be seen by a nearby Doppler weather radar.

I know bats have a bad rap, but they really are amazing creatures, and they’re very helpful to our ecosystem, eating moths that destroy crops, and they’re so quiet that 15 million of them can live right outside your city and you would never know.

Read the full article on the nature conservancy’s website: READ NOW

_{Photo from The Nature Conservancy website. Credit to Claire Everett.}