The Secret Lives of Bats: My Adventures with the World's Most Misunderstood Mammals

247 Pages·2015·13.83 MB·English

by  Merlin Tuttle

CONTENTS
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
A City That Loves Bats
Acknowledgments
Teenage Discoveries
Saving the Gray Myotis
Tracking Bat Nightlife
Investigating Vampire Bats
Bats Through a Camera’s Eye
Discovering Frog-Eating Bats
Finding America’s Most Elusive Bats
Cacti That Compete for Bats
Photos I
Free-Tailed Bat Caves and Crop Pests
African Adventures
Bat-Loving Monks, Tigers, and Poachers
Mysteries of Bat-Guiding Flowers
Photos II
Bat Foresters
Fruit Grower Complaints
A National Park for Bats
Hope for the Future
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Text and photographs copyright © 2015 by Merlin Tuttle
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write
to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Tuttle, Merlin D.
The secret lives of bats : my adventures with the world's most misunderstood
mammals / Merlin Tuttle.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-544-38227-5 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-544-39043-0 (ebook) 1.
Bats. 2. Bats—Research—Anecdotes. 3. Tuttle, Merlin D. I. Title.
QL737.C5T896 2015
569'.4074—dc23
2015017314

Cover photograph © Merlin Tuttle Cover design by Martha Kennedy
v1.1015
I dedicate this book to the memory of Verne and Marion
Read, who sponsored and participated in many of my
early adventures in studying and conserving bats, and to
my wife, Paula, who enthusiastically partners with me in
all my continuing activities.
PREFACE
A CITY THAT LOVES BATS
NEWSPAPER HEADLINES SCREAMED, “Bat colonies sink teeth into city.” They
claimed that hundreds of thousands of rabid bats were invading and attacking the
citizens of Austin, Texas. It was September 23, 1984, and 1.5 million Brazilian
free-tailed bats had begun moving into 16-inch-deep crevices beneath the
Congress Avenue Bridge, just a few blocks from the State Capitol.
For more than a decade, Americans had been bombarded with scary
newspaper and magazine stories that often included vividly imaginative accounts
of rabid bats attacking people. “The Nightmare House,” which appeared in the
April 1, 1980, issue of Family Circle, even went so far as to claim that a family
had been trapped in their home for three days and nights while a horde of bats
attacked.
When Austin health officials added their warnings, many Austinites panicked
and wanted the bats exterminated. Rather than viewing the great clouds of
emerging bats as a wonder of nature, they were reminded of Alfred Hitchcock’s
terrifying classic, The Birds. Not surprisingly, people began imagining attacks
from bats that were merely chasing flying insects, and Austin suddenly became
the world center for scary bat stories.
Having just founded Bat Conservation International (BCI) to help people
understand and appreciate bats, I felt that the new onslaught of frightening
claims presented an extreme challenge. Nevertheless, I truly believed that Austin
provided a golden opportunity to demonstrate that bats make wonderful
neighbors. When I announced my resignation as curator of mammals at the
Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin so I could move BCI to Austin, nearly
everyone thought I’d lost my mind. On learning of my plans, Texas Monthly
magazine gave me its “Bum Steer” award, a tongue-in-cheek distinction given
for especially embarrassing decisions.
With only one employee, I moved BCI to Austin in March 1986. We were just
in time for the bats’ spring return and within days, armed with several live ones,
I began meeting with leading city officials, community leaders, and media
representatives.
Fortunately, the truth about bats is extremely powerful. Free-tailed bats have
strange faces, but their big brown eyes, winsome expressions, and gentle nature
quickly converted countless skeptics. People frequently lost their fear in the
blink of a bat’s eye. When prominent socialite Roberta Crenshaw was informed
of my efforts, she declared, “He might as well try saving cockroaches!” She
assured her friends that if she had to view one of my bats close up she’d
probably have nightmares for a month. Yet, when she finally gave in and took a
look, she exclaimed, “Oh my—it’s cute!” And she became one of America’s first
supporters of BCI and an outspoken promoter of Austin’s bats.
Just two months after “awarding” me, Texas Monthly featured a story strongly
supporting my bat conservation efforts. And just four years later, at a bridge-side
ceremony attended by nearly 700 people, Mayor Lee Cooke proudly announced,
“We’ve become the bat capital of America. It’s really exciting that we’ve come
from concern to a position where we want to protect, covet, and welcome the
bats.”
Even Governor Ann Richards became a bat fan. Soon after her election in
1991, she invited me to bring my bats to dinner to entertain her friends at the
governor’s mansion. It was an evening frequently punctuated by exclamations of
“Wow—I had no idea! Did I hear you right? Bats from just one cave can eat
more than a hundred tons of insects in a single night?” and “You really can train
them like dogs?”
Time and again in my more than 50 years of studying bats, I’ve seen similarly
dramatic conversions, perhaps explaining why I was brave enough to tackle
Austin. It is simply amazing how quickly attitudes improve when people finally
understand bats as they really are—sophisticated, beautiful, even cute, quite
aside from their crucial roles as primary predators of insects, pollinators of
flowers, and dispersers of seeds.
Austin now carefully protects its bats and has become the world center for
stories documenting bats as safe neighbors and valued allies. In more than 30
years of sharing our city with the world’s largest urban bat colony, no one has
been harmed. And, simply left alone, these bats consume 15 tons of insects
nightly. They also bring 12 million tourist dollars to downtown Austin each
summer. On a typical August evening, people from all over the world line the
Congress Avenue Bridge, jockeying shoulder to shoulder for favored views of
the great emergence columns, truly one of our planet’s premier wildlife
spectacles. The bats pass within just a few feet of a flickering storm of flashing
cameras, up to five columns at a time that can be seen for more than a mile as
great black ribbons against sunset skies.
Of course, I can’t share live bats close up—or even Austin’s bridge bats—with
more than a privileged few. However, in the following pages, I will share
highlights from a lifetime of thrilling adventure and scientific discovery,
covering every continent where bats live. From moonshiner standoffs to close
encounters with tigers, cobras, and poachers—and bats as cute as any panda and
as strange as any dinosaur, tiny bumblebee bats to giant flying foxes. Follow
along, and I hope that through my adventures, you too will become passionate
about bats.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
COUNTLESS INDIVIDUALS have provided critical inspiration and guidance,
beginning with my parents, Horace and June Tuttle, who instilled a love of
nature and can-do attitude and enthusiastically supported my early interest in
becoming a bat biologist. Ernest S. Booth’s talk to my fifth-grade class inspired
me to become a mammalogist. Charles O. Handley Jr. provided early inspiration
to study bats and later hired me to lead his Mammals of the Smithsonian
Venezuelan Project. He also played an important role in getting me accepted into
a top graduate program at the University of Kansas. Joseph C. Howell and
Wayne H. Davis enthusiastically assisted me with my first published research. J.
Knox Jones Jr. and Robert S. Hoffmann provided invaluable counsel as my
major professors in graduate school, and my former wife, Diane Stevenson,
taught me to write.
While I was employed as curator of mammals at the Milwaukee Public
Museum, Verne and Marion Read and their family virtually adopted me,
providing crucial encouragement and financial support, including Verne’s
participation as Bat Conservation International’s (BCI) founding trustee. Many
of BCI’s greatest achievements would not have been possible without the Reads’
leadership contributions.
Gordon M. Sears, chairman of T. J. Ross and Associates, Inc., and Bill
Walker, president and CEO of Bacardi Limited, provided invaluable leadership
guidance during the founding of BCI and served for many years as trustees.
Additional trustees who provided special assistance include Jeff Acopian, Mark
Adkins, Gene Ames Jr., David Bamberger, Eugenio Clariond, Mike Cook,
Sharon Forsyth, Bob Gerrie, Don Grantges, Elizabeth Jones, Joan Kelleher,
Travis and Bettina Mathis, Scott McVay, John Mitchell, Peggy Phillips, Mark
Ritter, Beth Robertson, Andy Sansom, Lee Schmitt, D. J. Sibley, Marshall and
Patsy Steves, Dave Weaver, and Mark Weinberger.
Most of my greatest achievements would not have been possible without the
loyal support of hundreds of colleagues from around the world. They lent
invaluable advice and credibility, shared their latest discoveries, partnered on
projects, and provided articles for BCI’s BATS magazine. Foremost among these
were Luis Aguirre, Robert Barclay, John Bowles, Mark Brigham, Cal
Butchkoski, Richard Clawson, Denny Constantine, Paul Cox, Bob Currie, Brock
Fenton, Ted Fleming, Stephen Frantz, Steve Goodman, Leslie Hall, Daniel
Hargreaves, Gareth Jones, Tom Kunz, Richard LaVal, Gary McCracken, Rodrigo
Medellin, Shahroukh Mistry, Arnulfo Moreno, Scott Mori, Rachel Page, Lars
Pettersson, Paul Racey, Fiona Reid, Ralph Simon, Fred Stabler, Peter Taylor,
Don Thomas, Gary Wiles, and Don Wilson. I especially appreciate my longtime
friendship with Mike Ryan, his early support of BCI, and the adventures we’ve
shared while coauthoring 13 scientific publications.
BCI staff were additionally essential, especially Ed Arnett, Mari Murphy
Houghton, Jim Kennedy, Amy McCartney, Linda Moore, and Janet Tyburec.
And BCI could not have succeeded in its mission without thousands of
extremely generous members and donors and hundreds of partnering
organizations, agencies, and corporations. Among BCI donors, in addition to the
Read family, I owe special debts of gratitude for timely contributions from Ruth
Adomeit; Luis Bacardi; Lee, Ramona, and Ed Bass; Bill and Carole Haber;
Bettina and Travis Mathis; John Mitchell; Paxson Offield; Kenneth Olson; and
the Brown, Lennox, and Kronkosky Foundations. The Nature Conservancy, the
Tennessee Valley Authority, the American Cave Conservation Association, and
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were leading partners in protecting key bat
caves, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the
U.S. National Park Service, and the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation
Service, and a long list of mining companies helped ensure the establishment of
hundreds of bat sanctuaries that now protect millions of bats in old mines.
I am especially grateful to Mary Smith and many others at the National
Geographic Society for critical advice and research support, for generous
promotion of BCI in its early days, and for having educated millions of people
worldwide about bats through publication of my five articles in their magazine.
Also, Survival Anglia, a longtime leader in wildlife film productions, produced a
documentary, The Secret World of Bats, that premiered nationally on CBS
television in the United States and eventually aired in more than 100 additional
countries. The film had a major impact in promoting public understanding of
bats, and all who care about bats are indebted to cameraman-producer Dieter
Plage.
My literary agent, Russell Galen, provided critical early advice and
encouragement without which this book would not have been written, and my
editor, Lisa White, made numerous insightful suggestions that greatly improved
the final product. Jerry Hughes patiently led me into the modern world of digital
photography after decades of reliance on film.
I’ve been given the priceless privilege of a life filled with discovery and
adventure on behalf of an extraordinarily worthy cause that had been written off