Most people, when they think of bats, often think of the macabre, or myths that were once thought to be true. You’ve heard of the saying, “Blind as bat.” Well, bats are not blind, and they aren’t rodents or birds. They will not suck your blood, and most do not have rabies. Bats play key roles in our ecosystem, especially by eating insects, including agricultural pests. Educating ourselves with these unique mammals, and recognizing their value is the best protection we can offer them.

Common Misconceptions:

Bats carry rabies. In reality less than half of 1% of bats carries the rabies virus. In the last 40 years fewer than 40 people in the United States have contracted rabies from bats. A person is more likely to be struck and killed by lightning than get rabies from a bat. However, rabies is a dangerous disease so you should avoid direct contact with bats as well as other wild animals.

Bats are rodents. Bats may be similar to rodents in many ways, but there’s recent evidence that point to bats being more closely related to primates than to rodents.

Bats are blind. Bats cannot see color, but they see better at night than we do, and many bats can also see in the dark by using echolocation.

Bats get tangled in people’s hair. Bats may occasionally fly close to someone while catching insects, but they are too smart to fly and get tangled into someone’s hair. That's because the bats send a high frequency tone that bounces off objects giving them the ability to distinguish the size, shape and even texture of a tiny insect, and it enables them to avoid obstacles as small as a piece of thread.