Zach Dodson is an Austin-born writer/artist/illustrator
Author of Bats of the Republic, a wonderful out-of-the-box creation
Buy it – and look inside the dust cover!
Here is his blog about some books that influenced his love of bats.

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10 Books That Will Change Your Mind about Bats

Bats are a much-maligned animal. Long thought of as creepy or evil or diseased, a closer look reveals that the wide variety of bat species also possess an amazing array of attributes and perform all sorts of vital ecological roles: from pollinating bananas and mangoes to eating so many insects every night that they save farmers millions in pesticide. I’ve written a book that features bats. It’s called Bats of the Republic (as in the Republic of Texas). It’s set in the 1840s when Texas was its own country for those few strange years, and the main character is a naturalist who travels to Texas and becomes obsessed with documenting all the bat species there (like an Audubon for bats, really). He makes camp outside of a cave and creates many drawings of bats, featured in the book.
He’s a bat lover, and I hope the book reveals why we all should be. To that end, I’ve put together a list of other books that reveal these fascinating creatures and their essential role in the ecology of the planet and human activities. There’s never been a more important time to pay attention to bats. White Nose Syndrome is a relentless new disease that has devastated the North American bat population in recent years. White fungus appears on the faces and wings of hibernating bats, causing them to wake up in the middle of winter when food sources are scarce. The mortality rate at the caverns where the disease is discovered often approaches 100%. Over 6 million bats have died since 2006. This ecological disaster is the most precipitous decline of wildlife in a century and has wide-ranging implications for the environment, farming, and biodiversity.There are many ways you can help, but a first great step is learning more. Here are some excellent bat books to begin with.

“In Praise of Bats” essay in the book The Moon by Whale Light by Diane Ackerman

This is a great place to start. Ackerman, a lyrical and fluid writer, makes a literary introduction to bats. Her guide into their hidden world is none other than Merlin Tuttle, bat photographer and conservationist, who founded Bat Conservation International. His namesake applies: the man was a bat wizard and did much to champion their cause and work to change people’s negative perception of these fascinating creatures. They visit Bracken Cave, near San Antonio, Texas, the largest colony of bats (and actually the largest concentration of mammals) on the planet. I went when I was doing research for the book, to watch their nightly emergence in the summer. It was beautiful: for over four hours, the bats streamed from the mouth of the cave. It sounded like a waterfall. Ackerman helps set the record straight: how damaging myths about Dracula and rabies have been to bats, and how important they are to us ecologically. A perfect meditation to enter the kingdom of Chiroptera.

Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures by Bill Schutt

This book takes as its subject every creature that lives off of blood as a primary source of food. So: leaches, bed bugs, ticks, and, of course, vampire bats. There are only three species of vampire bats (out of over 1,200 species of bats total — one of the most diverse animal families on the planet), and their reputation is outsized. One of the species feeds exclusively on chickens. Schutt gets into some pretty grisly stuff: a digestion system that processes blood as food is a different thing, and vampire bats indeed have sneaky ways of stalking their prey. But they are, above all, fascinating. And really not creepy at all next to the chapters on the other blood-suckers. Those are creatures to be afraid of.

Stellaluna by Janell Cannon

This is a great kids’ book that has found wide appeal with lovely drawings and a sweet story. Stellaluna is a baby fruit bat who gets separated from her mother and grows up among the birds. She struggles to adapt to their ways until she meets some fellow bats who reveal that there are other, more bat-like ways to do things. The takeaway is that it’s OK to be strange and different. A good message, coming from bats.

Bat Bomb: World War II’s Other Secret Weapon by Jack Couffer

OK, this is going to sound like science fiction, but it’s not. During WWII, tasked with coming up with ways to end the war with Japan, a group of scientists, generals, and government officials began to work on a scheme to release clouds of bats over the skies of Japan with incendiary devices attached. The idea was that the bats would roost in buildings, the bombs would go off, and the entire city would catch fire. Their tests were surprisingly and dangerously successful. President Roosevelt was on board. But the plan was eventually shelved in favor of… the atom bomb, and the bats never got to carry out their kamikaze mission. But can you imagine? File under: stuff you can’t make up.

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block

OK, so this book is not about bats, but I couldn’t resist with this character! Growing up in a dreamy ’80s Los Angeles with plenty of freaks and geeks around her, Weetzie Bat is a cherished character for those who are or have been (or even have never been, like me) a teenage girl. If you want a quirky trip back to the ’80s, this is the book for you. Again, nothing to do with bats. But they’re making a movie of it, so now might be the time to revisit Punky Brewster’s cooler older sister.

Bat Ecology by Thomas H. Kunz and M. Brock Fenton

If you’re getting really serious and scientific about bats, this is the ONLY book for you. It’s the bat bible, and just about as thick. It’s tough to parse without a biologist’s vocabulary (all the bats are referred to in their Latinate names, for example), but there are some fascinating papers within. One of the parts I enjoyed most explained (with diagrams) all the methods scientists might use to capture bats, and how to do it yourself, if you were conducting a study. The mechanics of bat pollination, echolocation, behavior, and aerodynamics can all be found here. Interested in “The Consequences of Polyovulation for Life-History Variation among Bats”? This is the book for you.

Dune by Frank Herbert

OK, Dune isn’t a book about bats either, but it is a sci-fi classic. And it is set in the desert, so it was a big influence on my book, which takes place on an earth that has become a lot more like the planet Arakis. In Dune, bats are the carrier pigeons, and Herbert’s desert people, the Fremen, use them to send long-range messages. In the Illustrated Dune there is a drawing of the scene where Hawat “took a tiny tube, held it beside the Bat’s head and chattered into the tube; then, lifting the creature high, he threw it upward.” The message is imprinted into the bat’s neural pathways and reflected in its song. Someone with a decoding machine can extract the hidden message in the song of the bat. It’s a beautiful idea, but the reality of bats is no less astounding. Recently it was discovered that bats’ songs are complex and contain many markers and variations, rivaled only by whale songs for their complexity and amount of information they carry. They are pitched too high for humans to hear.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson

I suppose there’s no way to write this list without mention of Batman. He generally does bats justice, I feel. But the Dark Knight series was a watershed moment in graphic novels. The urban, gritty feel of Dark Knight was 180 degrees from Adam West’s KA-POW! Batman and all the superhero shtick of early comic books. This series marked a serious departure into dark and disturbing themes, definitely meant for adults. My book features many illustrations and graphic devices throughout, and I’ve long thought that graphic novels deserve a place in the pantheon of literature. Serving as inspiration for the more recent Batman films, The Dark Knight will certainly be among those remembered. Like Batman, bats are misunderstood outsiders, but ultimately do much good for humankind!

Bats at the Library by Brian Lies

Another children’s book, and one in a series: Lies’s bats go everywhere — the beach, the ballgame, the stage. I chose the library because, well, books. But also, bats were recently discovered living in two libraries in Portugal. The librarians have long tolerated them because the bats eat moths that would otherwise threaten to destroy the old and valuable books they are trying to preserve (we’re talking literal bookworms here: they aren’t a good thing for old books!). So, in exchange for cleaning up a bit of guano, the librarians keep the bats around as most useful exterminators. Another instance of bats being incredibly helpful to humans!

The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell

The main character here is a bat. As in Stellaluna, bats are different, and Jarrell makes much of that difference. Here the bat is, well, a bat-poet, and this children’s animal story functions as a sly metaphor on the writing life, and the isolation it can engender. Recommended for poets. Get the edition with illustrations by Maurice Sendak because: illustrations by Maurice Sendak!


Last year I purchased an art piece for my friends at Austin Bat Refuge, Lee and Dianne; the art work is by Kitty Cantrell.  It is her rock art ” Little Brown Bats”  It is several little browns on a rock wall and it’s very life like.  A few weekends ago Lee and Dianne had a Evening Bat come in for rescue.  Evening Bats look a lot like Little Browns except they are smaller and darker color.  Sometimes the bats that come in are tested in smaller places to see how well they can fly after necessary rehabilitation has been given.  The little bat was enjoying a flight around the front room.  Little Evening Bats can fly very swiftly and can crawl on the ground even faster.  Its like chasing a cock roach.  They can land very suddenly and tuck themselves away in the smallest of places.  They are crevice bats after all.  Flying around she decided to take a quick stop so fast she almost wasn’t seen.  Dianne noticed she had landed and tucked herself right up against one of the Little Brown Bats on the rock art.  The little bat was  probably wondering why her new found family members weren’t putting off any body heat and why they weren’t clicking to her to greet her.  Never the less, she knew she was safe with her new family.  She was so happy she even fell asleep all snuggled up to them.  Some people mistakenly think that bats can’t see well!  That is a myth!  They see quite fine day or night.  As for Kitty’s art it has been Little Bat tested and Little Bat approved!  And to me that is how life-like her art is!  I truly Love and believe in Lee, Dianne and Kitty’s missions to make life better and beautiful in the appreciation of Bats and other wildlife.  Thanks for reading!  Marsha
Kitty Cantrell little brown wall hanging


We’ve always wondered why every morning we find whole moths floating in the water of the drinking trough, in the bat garden.  These are whole moths, not just the wings we would expect to find, when bats catch the moths, shuck the wings, and eat the rest.
So why so many whole, often live, moths in the water?
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moths, bats, austin bats

bats, moths, austin bats

Here a Seminole bat controls a moth

Last night we finally got proof of what we suspected to be the reason.
We have a blacklight that attracts insects into the garden. It hangs from the center ridge of the aviary and is directly over the drinking pool. The pool is also situated in the center so that it collects the drips from the misters, which are also hung from the center ridge.
Our flight school bats fly in wide circles that are tangent to the light, so that they can catch any moth that happens to be flying at the wrong place at the wrong time. When they catch one, they curl up into a ball as they fly, to control the moth and bring it up to their mouths.
If one watches a moth circle under the light, within seconds a bat will zoom in and snatch the moth.
Last night we watched while evening bats did just that. bats, moths, austin bats

bats, moths, austin bats
But in between catches of fluttering moths, we noticed times where moths we were watching, just before a bat swooped in, would fold their wings and plummet downwards, splash-landing in the pool!
We have often heard of moths evolving defenses to counter the amazing bio-sonar the bats employ to hunt them. This arms race has been going on since bats developed echolocation around 25 million years ago, and has manifested in countless ways ever since. Some moth species have it hard-wired in their DNA that, upon hearing bat bio-sonar, their synapses fire in such a way that paralyzes their wings, causing them to plummet downward, away from the bats closing trajectory. This seems to work quite well, unless the moths just happen to be over our bat drinking trough!
So now we know why so many moths are found each morning in the pool! We just may move the light location so that these moths land in the garden instead, and rise once more to provide additional foraging opportunities for our bats as they hone their hunting skills. This will be a big benefit when we have a full house of bats in flight school, with not enough moths to go around.
We love these little insights that nightly observation provides in the aviary!


The aviary seems huge now that most of this year’s class has graduated from flight school. But now that they’re not grabbing all the visual attention, we can better analyze the skills of the more cryptic species, such as this evening bat, to decide who else is ready for release.

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Kendalia bat from Linda Garriot

evening bats nycticeius humeralis austin bats rescue rehabilitation release


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Look at the color change as they get older – black when tiny turning a beautiful mahogany as they near adulthood.

Pup 2 on the left about 12 days old – 2.9 grams – being fed every 3 hours
Found in a Houston backyard next to an apartment complex being demolished.  He was still clinging to his dead mum when Savannah rescued him.  Thanks Savannah!

Pup 3 in the middle about 3 days old – 1.9 grams – being fed every 2 hours
Found in Kingsland with her injured mum at the base of a tree.  This pup brought to us by Ally when the mum died.  Thanks for trying to help the mum Ally and likewise for bringing us this pup.

Pup 1 (Fury) on the right about 51 days old – 8.0 grams – being hand fed once a day in the flight cage bat box
Born to a rehabilitating bat who came to us from Adamsville, already pregnant, unbeknownst to us.  We were treating the mum for a fungal infection when she gave birth 05 Apr 2016.

The two pups on the left are wonderful, playful little guys that love to romp around and purr like crazy when their bellies are full.  Fury (on the right) was not happy about being associated with these infants, he’s a big bat now and he and his mum are almost ready for release.

Feeding just these pups every 3 hours and every 2 hours makes for a busy schedule.


Here’s our first glimpse of Fury, Eve’s pup, his tiny wing sticking up above her belly.

evening bat and pup at Austin Bat Refuge

Eve the evening bat and her pup Fury the furious Night Fury

Eve came to us in a piece of firewood that had been standing dead timber on a ranch in Adamsville until 28 Jan 2016 when it was felled, limbed, cut into pieces, and run through a log splitter, revealing Eve uninjured in her tree cavity.  The log was quickly taped back together and put in a box and brought to us by the landowners, by way of our good friend Ed Sones.  Since she was missing fur in a circular pattern on her back, we swabbed and cultured for ringworm.  Three weeks later the culture was negative so we just are giving her supportive care until she regrows the fur that will allow her to effectively thermo-regulate once she’s released to find a new roost.
Since she had a heating pad above her pup tent while undergoing treatment, she must have thought spring started in February, so consequently she gave birth to Fury on 05 April 2016, one of the first births in the country, at least the first one named after Toothless the Night Fury, star of How to Train Your Dragon (who, of course, was modeled after a baby evening bat).

Eve the evening bat's home that was cut and split and brought to Austin Bat Refuge

Eve’s tree house that was cut for firewood

Fury grew quickly to 5.1 grams within a week of birth.  His mum was very attentive and he reached 7 grams in three weeks.

Eve has since weaned little Fury, always a sketchy time in bat rehab.  He did not like the formula we used and accepted it even less when we added blended mealworms to the mix.  Thankfully, he is now transitioning to whole mealworms so it looks like he will soon get the hang of self-feeding.

Here’s their log, hung as a roost, and allowing Fury to leap out and practice flying when he gets the urge.  They can come back and roost in the maternity pup tent (rigged to stay out of the way, below) if they like or return to Eve’s tree house if they feel like it.  Last night, with the storms, they stayed in the tree house all night.

Eve's tree house with new hinges and latch at Austin Bat Refuge

Eve & Fury’s tree house with new hinges and latch,  The pup tent Fury was born in hung below

Flight school – Here’s Fury flapping like crazy to get back to the roost Fury’s first leap – flight school
This is the best motivation for young pups just figuring out what these wing things are for.