E71 Naturally Scott Adventures – 20 Million Bats: The Greatest Wildlife Show on Earth 🦇🌅e

What could possibly draw someone to Texas in the middle of summer?

Twenty million bats.

In this edition of Naturally Scott Adventures, Scott Harris travels to Bracken Cave Preserve just outside San Antonio—home to the largest bat colony on Earth. Every summer evening, millions of Mexican free-tailed bats pour from a single cave in one of the greatest wildlife spectacles anywhere in the world. 

Scott shares what it's like to witness the breathtaking "batnado," explains why these tiny mammals are so important to agriculture, and explores the incredible adaptations that allow them to survive among predators, navigate by echolocation, and consume hundreds of tons of insects every night.

In this episode:

🦇 Witnessing the world's largest bat colony

🌪️ The spectacular "batnado" and river of bats

🐍 Snakes, owls, hawks, coyotes, and the predators waiting outside the cave

🚜 Why farmers love bats

🌎 Inside Bracken Cave Preserve near San Antonio

📸 Tips for planning your own visit

✨ One of the greatest wildlife spectacles in North America

Whether you're a bat enthusiast or simply love unforgettable wildlife experiences, Bracken Cave is a destination unlike any other.

👉 Stay connected with Naturally Scott:
 https://naturallyscott.kit.com/5fd12c6752

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to this edition of Naturally Scott. This is one of our Naturally Scott adventures. So there won't be a human guest along with me, but we will have quite a few guests that you're going to learn. Anyway, I'm your host Scott Harris. As I say every week, but I mean it every week. I'm thrilled to do so, and I really appreciate the people that take the time to listen. I hope we're learning together because I feel like I'm learning every time I do one of these, and I absolutely love it. I look forward to it. I really look forward to your messages, your texts, and your emails, and those responses. So let's keep those coming if we can. Um, for those of you that are relatively new, uh, we do a podcast, we release one every Thursday morning, and we've been doing it now for just about a year, so we're pretty excited about that. Um on uh every other week, we have a human guest and we talk about something in the natural world, almost always animals, could be mammals, uh, could be birds, occasionally insects, um, a variety of different things that we love talking about. And um, and then on a week like this, on the other weeks, uh, we go on an adventure together. It's one that I've taken already, and now I'm bringing you along with me, and um, hopefully uh bringing you some information and some pictures and some videos that you haven't seen, and maybe even motivating you to get out there and see where I am. Now, today we're really gonna have a blast. I gotta tell you, we're going to Texas. We're going to Texas in July or August. And you have to be wondering to yourself, why would you possibly go to Texas in July or August? Triple digit heat, some bugs. Um, it is not the most glorious time uh to visit the largest of the lower 48 states. So I'm going to give you the answer. The answer is located just outside of San Antonio, Texas, and it is the Bracken Caves, B-R-A-C-K-E-N. And it is truly amazing. And what makes it amazing? And what brings people there? What brought me there, and my son Justin, who, as you regular listeners know, is a producer on this. Why would we drive almost 1,500 miles to go to San Antonio in the summer? Well, the answer is simple. It's 20 million bats. 20 million bats. I'm not the world's biggest bad fan. I've I've traveled a little bit of the world and I don't go out of my way to see bats, although I've seen some pretty cool ones. Canopy Tower down in uh Panama saw a massive bat. Um I don't know how big it was, but it would circle the tower every night. Um and I've seen bats in Africa, and and and that is it's cool. It's an addition. I don't ever go out of my way to see them, but these ones I did. And the the the bats that are there in the Bracken Cave, this is the largest collection of bats in the world, in the entire world. And to give you an idea, because 20 million is a big number, for me, it's a number really beyond my ability to grasp. I can look outside and say, hey, there's seven blue jays, there's two foxes, there's three osprey, that I get. Um, I can get a hundred, I can get a thousand. Um, but twenty million is an extraordinary number. Now, to give you an idea of what 20 million means, 20 million is the population of the greater New York City area. It is the equivalent to the population of Chile or Kazakhstan or the entire state of Florida. It's a lot of bats, but it's packed into a small area. It's packed into a cave that is 650 feet front to back, just short of 125 feet side to side, and just short of 120 feet tall. It's a single cave with a single entrance or entry. Um, and when you go look at it, it looks like, well, it's a bowl. It's collapsed. And so what that means is, and there are some pictures we're sharing right now, is that the opening is vertical. So you sit with people in the evening and you look across, um, not a very big bowl at all. I mean, it's certainly not 100 yards, it might be 30 or 40 yards, that you're looking across to the opening of this cave. And as you look at it and you're waiting for the sun to set in the evening, you know that inside that cave there are 20 million bats. And there's not very many people there. They allow about 50 or 60 people in every night during the bat season, if you will. You've got to make reservations. They generally sell out. Um, bring your water, bring whatever it is you want. Um, they do offer some benches and an amazing view and a spectacular experience. Uh, but there's not a snack bar, there's not water, there's nothing like that. So be prepared when you get there for that. Now, when you get there and you settle in, the bats come out at sunset. And if you look at your little iPhone and it says sunset is 7.23, those bats are coming out somewhere between 7.21 and 725 every night. They are spot on with the scheduled sunset. And it's kind of fun because you've got the volunteers, the docents, a couple of employees in the background. And as you talk to them a little bit, you find out they've got a pool on the exact minute that the bats come out, but it's a pretty tight window. Now, the bats coming out is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in nature. And maybe this, again, maybe you guys already know what 20 million is. Maybe you really do. Um, but I didn't. And I'm not sure I still do. But when the bats start to come out, they do what's called a bat NATO. So they're coming out from inside the cave in these groups. Um, and they they tend to group together, family groups or groups that are nesting together inside, and they come out at this opening, and they're coming out kind of slow. They got to work up some speed. They've got to go maybe 80 feet up into the air. Sorry about that. They've got to go maybe 80 feet up into the air to get started to take off. And so as they come out, they form what's called a batonado. And it looks like a tornado, if you just imagine wind instead of bats. They're coming out 100,000 bats every single minute for three and a half hours. I mean, it is nonstop. These bats are pouring out of this cave in numbers that are just astronomical. And as they, as they pour out, they they collect into these groups and they form what's called a river of bats. And they generally take off into the same direction. And now you're looking at either a video or a photo right now, um, but you'll notice that the bats go off, and that's a river of bats, and they just keep coming out, and it's over and over and over again. And it's a miracle of things to watch. It's truly amazing. Now, one of the things that happens is it's not just the 50 or 60 guests or the docents that know these bats are coming out. Wild animals know that these bats are coming out, and so they are prepared for this, they are ready for that. Um, and so you get, you can watch this starting before sunset if you're paying attention. You can see skunks and raccoons and sometimes coyotes are coming out to the mouth of the cave. And what they're hoping for is that these um bats will have a little collision and one of them will get knocked to the floor, or there's some juveniles that aren't terribly experienced flyers yet. Maybe they make a mistake, and if they get dropped down to the ground, they're they're eaten. Um, it is not easy for them to take off from the ground. Um, it is much easier when they're inside the cave just to drop and then start flying. And so they are dead when that happens. And even if they make it out of that, and by the way, there is one part of that that's truly amazing. So imagine the mouth of this cave. Hanging from the top of the mouth of this cave are snakes. They wrap their tails and they drop down and they're swinging, and they are catching bats that come by. You talk about nature adapting. These snakes have learned how to do that. Um, that can't be instinct, it has to be learned, and then it has to be taught. And these trees, and you've seen the pictures now of the trees, the trees are filled with raptors. Merlins, peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered hawks, just lined. Now, the the bats bats are amazing on a number of levels. Number one, they are the only flying mammal in the world. That's it. That's it. There are what are called flying squirrels, but they're not flying, they're gliding. Bats are actually, actually flying. Not only that, they're spectacularly fast. They can reach 100 miles an hour, which makes them one of the absolute fastest animals in the entire world. It is uh, and they pick up that speed quickly. But in the time when they haven't quite picked up that speed yet, again, they've got to come up that 60 or 80 feet, and then they've got to start to get their speed and take off. That's when they get picked off by the raptors. And of course, you know, you got what, a dozen, 15, 20 raptors in those trees. Um, and they're not gonna make a dent in 20 million, even though they do it every single night, um, but they get well fed. And so, and then, and then the bats, they soar up to 10,000 feet, nearly two miles into the sky. And they're hunting while they're up there. Um, they are looking for insects. They are a blessing to the farmers. Now, the area where they go most frequently is 60 miles away. So they come out of this cave, 100,000 a minute, they take to the sky. If they're able to avoid skunks and snakes and and coyotes and whatnot, and then get through the raptors, because once they reach speed and height, the raptors can't do anything about it. They're not that fast and they don't go that high generally. So then they're free, they take off, they head to the farmers' fields, and when they're out there, they are eating what is it, 150 tons of insects every single night. That happens to be the biomass of 20 million bats. These bats literally eat their weight in insects every single night. Farmers love them. It's a no-risk, no cost, no poison, amazing thing for the farmers. And so people have had to overcome their fear of bats and the stories and all those different things. Um, but now the farmers certainly welcome them uh because they are cleaning up their fields every night. The bats have a very sophisticated echolocation system, so the throwing out sound it bounces back, it identifies uh where the moth is or where the other kinds of insects are, and uh they're able to attack those things and bring them in. And they're doing this all night long um coming out of that cave. So let's say sunset um is roughly 7:30. Um it's it's 10 o'clock, it's 11 o'clock before all those bats are out of there. And so, and they take off and off they go into this river of bats. And when I say river, it shows up on Doppler. I mean, it's it's truly amazing the biomass that is off there flying. Now, Bracken Cave is primarily a maternity colony. So what you're looking at is in general, is the mothers are coming in in the spring and they give birth in June. And so now we have this maternity colony taking place in this bat. The the male bats, the dads, take off and go off and roost in other places and other areas. There's a number of places in Texas where bats root. But again, if we go back inside this thing, if you can imagine this, there are roughly 500 bats per square foot inside this cave. So if you were inside and you were looking up at these bats, if you look at a square foot, which is not a big area, right? Just a square foot, there will be 500 bats hanging in that. And until the babies become strong enough to fly out at night with the moms, the moms have to bring back food to feed them. They're able to come back into that cave and find their exact baby every single night. Um, it is from this little teeny thing. These bats weigh a half an ounce. That's how big they are. You want to know what a half an ounce is? It's a double-A battery. That's how big they are. Now, they do live a long time. Um, if they don't get caught by the snakes or the coyotes or the raptors, they can have up to an 18-year lifespan, which is a pretty long time. Um, and so off they go to do that. Now, the bats themselves are migratory. Uh, they winter down in Mexico and then they come back up, as I said, in the spring. Although that's changing now a little bit. With climate change, we have some of the bats doing what's called overwintering. It's a term you've heard me use before. A number of birds have started to do it. Ospreys are one of them, where the way the weather is changing and the food continues, the food source continues, they just don't migrate. Ospreys, for example, are hanging around in Florida, and we find them hanging, you know, I live on Lake Greenwood in South Carolina. We find them hanging later here, not overwintering yet, but hanging later because they have everything they need here. Some of these bats are the same way. They decide, you know what, I've got everything I need. I'm not going back to Mexico for the winter. I'm going to stay here. And of course, any migration for any animal is when they're most susceptible, whether it's the wildebeest in the savannah, in East Africa, um, or pronghorns heading north, any animal uh in migration, um, because they're working constantly, they're burning energy, they're going to be weak. Any little tiny injury or illness will kill them. Um, it's a tough time. So these guys are staying. Now, that kind of changes the cave, too. If we go back, let's go back to the Civil War, for example. One thing that you may not have thought of yet, if you have 20 million bats eating 150 tons of food a night, there's going to be an awful lot of droppings. Bat guano, if you will. It's estimated that it's 100 feet deep in the cave. 100 feet of bat guano forms the floor of Bracken Cave. It's an awful lot. If you go back to the Civil War, um, when all the bats left and it was open in the winter, um, starting back then, they would go in and they would send workers in and they would take out fertilizer. They would take the guano out and they would use it for fertilizer and saltpeter, part of the ammunition process. They would gather that up and distribute it, kind of like peat moss in Scotland for burning for whiskey. Um, but since the bats are now wintering there, uh you can't do that anymore. Um, you can't go in there. And one of the reasons, well, the main reason that you can't go in there is the cave is deadly. It is deadly to human beings. Uh, the temperature is warm, it's um it's over 100 degrees. But most importantly, there are gases in there, and you would die in the gases. Now, the people that run the Bracken caves, they do go in two, three, four times a year, but they've got to completely put on a hazmat suit, full face mask, breathing apparatus, and everything, because without it, they die quickly. Um, and so you can go in about 20 feet into the front of that cave before it starts to slope down and become deadly. And so that sometimes that's what the raccoon and skunks and whatnot will do. Um, but it is um it is absolutely deadly. And for those who are a little freaked out about bats and the idea maybe of hiking on a hundred feet of guano, let me throw this out to you. There are six, the only thing that lives in the cave, the only thing that can live in the cave, other than the bats, are beetles. Now there are six different species of beetles in there. What do they have in common? They are flesh-eating beetles. So if you were to walk in there without the protection of the suit and get in, do your work and get out, but if you just stumbled on that cave and walked in there, um, you would die. You would either die from the gases or you would die from the flesh-eating beetles. Any of the bats that die, and you can imagine that 20 million bats, some are gonna die every night. They drop down, instantly eaten by the beetles. If you've got a skunk or a raccoon, maybe that's young and goes in a little too far and gets hit with the gases, they're gone. They're not gonna make it. So it is a wicked place all the way around from that point of view. Um, it is noisy. Listening to 20 million bats pour out of a cave uh creates a certain noise. Um, and you can walk around, you can circle um the um the bowl, if you will. You could walk around and circle that bowl. There's a little trail. You can take pictures all over. We're throwing up pictures here of sunsets and all kinds of things. It really is cool. Now, Justin and I, when we went down and visited, we were very fortunate. Um, they don't normally have tours in the morning. I believe that they said there were two or three uh that they do every month and those sell out quickly. Um, but we were fortunate enough to be invited uh to go along with the general manager, a gentleman named Fran Hutchins, great guy. Uh, taught me a lot, taught us a lot about bats. So he met us there one morning, just three of us, uh Justin and Fran and myself. We met there before dawn and we went out into the area where you sit in the benches, and there's nobody there, and it's pitch black. I mean, pitch black. We were on a moonless night. And suddenly you start to hear this sound. It's like mosquitoes buzzing, just a light buzzing. And for me, you don't even really realize it at first. Um and then it starts to pick up and pick up the sound and get a little more intense, and then all of a sudden there's these they're like raindrops, like giant raindrops start falling, but they're falling incredibly fast. And what's happening is these bats are coming back um from their four-way out into the fields, right? So they've been out, they've been 60 miles away, they've been two miles up in the air, they've been flying literally at 100 miles an hour, and they've been eating their body weight. Now they're coming back, and they want the safety and security of their cave. In order to do that, they have a new gauntlet to run. This gauntlet is owls, uh barred owls and great-horned owls, um, who have learned what time the bats come back, what route they take, and how to hunt them and pull some out. What the bats have learned is because they don't have to take the time to build up speed, which they have to do when they're exiting in the evening, they can drop down like rocks thrown out of the sky and then shoot inside the cave, um, reducing the odds of them being eaten. And to give you an idea how fast they're going and how this reversal is, it's three and a half hours to empty the cave. It's an hour and a half to fill the cave back up. These guys are coming in more than twice as fast as they went out, which gives them an opportunity to survive. And the sound is remarkable as these things are falling. It is just an amazing thing to hear. I'm not even sure which one I enjoy more, the coming back or the going out, probably the going out, really. But the coming back and the sun starts to come up, you get the pre-dawn light, and all of a sudden you're noticing it's literally millions and millions and millions of bats, not just falling from the sky, racing down from the sky. Imagine a peregrine falcon in a full stoop. That's what these bats are doing. And then they get inside the bowl, they turn 90 degrees, they shoot inside the cave. Once they're in the cave, they're safe. They just have to find their little square foot and make sure everything's cool. Um, but that's what they do. So this is something that I recommend you go out and see if you can. There are a handful of places in the country that have bats. Most of them are in Texas. You can find them. Uh, there's a bridge in San Antonio that has bats that come out every evening that you can go to. You can sit in a bar, have a cold beer, which isn't bad when it's 100 degrees out. Um, but there's something about seeing the largest bat colony in the world right here in the United States, right in Texas. So if you get that opportunity, I suggest you grab it and run. Now, I'm gonna throw my email up here at Scott at naturally scott.com. I implore you to send me a note. Uh, ask me any questions you've got. I will work hard to get the answer. Uh, tell me what it is that you think I'm doing well or think I'm doing wrong. Where can we improve? Ideas for future shows, either adventure shows like this one or suggested guests. I'm wide open to that. I've gotten some good guests from people that have taken the time to send me those notes, and I look forward. Getting more of those in the future because I love sharing these things with you guys. It's 20 or 30 minutes, but it gives you an idea of what's available in this country, and there truly, truly are remarkable things available in this country in almost every state, in so many different places, and I just get so excited about being able to share it with you guys. Should you happen to be watching us on YouTube, and thank you if you are, hit subscribe. Every time you do that, YouTube pushes this video out to more people. You know, we don't charge for a subscription, we don't run ads. I think YouTube runs ads, but we don't collect any money or anything. Uh we're just looking to share this message. I look to share my excitement, some of my adventures, the people I've been fortunate enough to meet, and um and get those conservation messages out there, get the possible places for you to visit out there, and just try to develop this community. So hit subscribe, it would be very much appreciated. If you've got a comment, drop it. If you liked it, hit the like button. Um, but subscribe takes you about two seconds, and it's really appreciated. Again, new episodes are dropping every Thursday. They run just about a half hour on average, some a little under, some a little over. And the even ones are a human guest talking about something that they specialize in. Um, and then the odd ones are these adventures that I am so fortunate to go on. Um, this one that we just went on together, The Bats, that will be part of a new book that I'm working on called American Safaris. And that is a book about 25 locations around the country where you can go if you go at the right time of year to the right place, you're virtually guaranteed to see X. I'm going out next week to do elephant seals in California, for example. Um, and then uh two weeks after that, going up to Oregon for gray whales and stellar sea lions. And the book is one-third birds, one-third terrestrial mammals, or one-third marine mammals, and then the odd chapter, the 25th chapter, is on alligators. Uh, bats are really the only small one, um, uh, certainly among the mammals, and even the birds are generally the bigger ones, the ospreys, the bald eagles, the short-eared owls. Um, and so I cannot wait to share that book with you guys, and I'll keep you posted as that goes through the process. Um I do encourage you, I encourage you every week, if you have an opportunity, get outside. Whatever outside is to you front porch, backyard, local park, national park, international trip, whatever it is, get outside. I guarantee you that you're going to see things that you're going to enjoy. I love sitting on my front porch. I grab a cigar, I put some bird seed out, we built a nice bird sanctuary out there. I was out there this morning before I recorded this podcast. And in half an hour, 19 different species of birds. And I got to watch them, you know, doing battle, the Cardinals versus the Blue Jays, and uh, and the red-bellied woodpeckers versus the blue jays, and everybody's out there, and the tit mice are sneaking in and grabbing some seeds, and the morning doves are coming down, and it's just magnificent. So get out there and do it. And when you do, make sure to stay safe and stay curious, because that just adds to the joy of everything you're doing. I'm your host, Scott Harris. This is Naturally Scott. Today is a Naturally Scott Adventures. I truly appreciate you taking the time to listen. Have a great day. Enjoy your own adventures, and if you want to, share them with me because I'd love to hear about what you guys are doing. Thank you and take care.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

This has been a Naturally Scott Adventures podcast with Scott Harris. Naturally Scott Adventures is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, and edited by Frank Sierra. Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at Naturally Scott Harris. If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Naturally Scott Adventures, thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.