- If you’re tired of the old-fashioned Halloween bats, try hanging up pictures of these little weirdoes.
Halloween and bats go together like a horse and carriage. It’s only appropriate, then, that this Halloween week coincides with the International Bat Appreciation Week.
And you should appreciate bats. We’d be quickly overrun by all manners of stinging, biting, or just plain irritating insects if bats weren’t there to devour them.
So, on this spookiest of weeks, let’s all celebrate the wonderful and weird world of bats. And it does get really weird — as these 10 bizarre bats demonstrate.
1. Mexican Free-Tailed Bat
Appearance-wise, there’s nothing weird about the Mexican free-tailed bat — it looks about as average as a bat can get. Once you see it at speed, though, you’ll realize why it made this list.
This bat holds a whole bunch of championship titles. Reaching a flying speed of 100 mph, it’s both the world’s fastest mammal and the fastest horizontal flyer on Earth.
The Mexican free-tailed bat isn’t afraid to soar high, either. It’s also the world’s highest-flying bat, flapping its way up to 11,000 feet.
2. Ghost Bat
The ghost bat has a suitable spooky name and creepy appearance for Halloween. What makes it strange, though, is that it preys on large vertebrates.
Ghost bats like to eat birds, reptiles, and even suitably-sized mammals. They are adept ambush hunters, hanging upside-down from a branch or a ledge as they wait for a careless animal to show up.
To help them catch their food, ghost bats have excellent hearing and sharp eyesight. The next time someone uses the phrase “blind as a bat,” tell them about the ghost bat.
3. Common Vampire Bat
The vampire bat is notorious both for its blood-sucking habits and its tendency to spread rabies. Indeed, these sharp-toothed bats can be very crafty in acquiring their daily dose of fresh blood.
Some vampire bats, for instance, like to feed on chickens. They’ll mimic the movements of chicks to worm their way under a hen before chowing down.
Infamous as they are, though, vampire bats aren’t complete blood-thirsty monsters. They’re very social animals and regularly share the blood they’ve sucked up with hungry members of their colony.
4. Spotted Bat
You’d think the most distinctive feature of the spotted bat would be the three black spots on its back. But nope — it’s the ears.
The spotted bat can grow to be just shy of five inches long. Yet, a full third of its body length consists of its (proportionately) ginormous ears.
Living in Mexico and the western U.S., the spotted bat has the biggest ears out of any North American bat. You can’t help but wonder why it was named after its spots and not the friggen’ ears.
5. Kitti’s Hog-nosed Bat
Kitti’s hog-nosed bat (so named after its discoverer, Kitti Thonglongya) has a much cuter nickname. It’s commonly known as the bumblebee bat because it’s about the same size.
With a maximum body length of a whopping 1.3 inches, the bumblebee bat is the smallest mammal in the world by body length. Tiny as they are, these bats are voracious predators of even tinier insects.
Sadly, the teeny-tiny bat may not be long for this world. It’s known to live only within a single province of Myanmar and its forest habitats are at risk of getting chopped down.
6. Greater Bulldog Bat
Like the ghost bat, the greater bulldog bat is famous due to its unusual diet. This fish-eating bat is also called the fisherman bat and it fully deserves that name.
That’s because it has a biological fishing net. The greater bulldog bat’s wing membrane forms a leathery pouch between its legs that it uses to trawl for fish.
When it catches one, the bat bends its legs to pull the fish out of the water. It then sinks its claws into its prey and flaps off to enjoy its meal.
It also looks like a bulldog. But it’s the fishing part that’s cool.
7. Wrinkle-faced Bat
Many kinds of bats have faces that only a mother could love. With the wrinkle-faced bat, however, we find it hard to believe even their mothers could convincingly call them handsome.
That scrunched-up mug isn’t the only strange thing about these creatures. They eat fruit, but they’re not classified as fruit bats; instead, they belong to the order of leaf-nosed bats despite lacking the signature leaf-shaped nose.
There’s a reason for all those wrinkles, though. They help channel fruit juice into the bat’s mouth, helping it get every bit of nutrients from its food. Additionally, the bat can straight-up stuff bits of fruit in its face wrinkles to save for later.
8. Buettikofer’s Epauletted Fruit Bat
You might think the weird thing about Buettikofer’s epauletted fruit bat is the name. And then you see the dog face.
Seriously, when we first saw a picture of this bat, we genuinely thought it was Photoshopped. But it’s real.
If this creature looks like your pooch, there’s your idea for a doggie Halloween costume.
9. Hammer-headed Bat
You’ve heard of a hammerhead shark, but are familiar with the hammer-headed bat. Well, its head doesn’t really look like a hammer. In fact, we can’t quite describe what that mug looks like.
As usual, though, the bat’s head is shaped like that for a reason. The male hammer-headed bat has enormous nasal chambers that allow its mating call to resonate far and wide.
The females, on the other hand, don’t need a jukebox mounted on their faces. As such, they look much more normal — relatively speaking.
10. Honduran White Bat
Think all bats are creepy, scary, leathery flying beasts? Allow us to introduce you to the Honduran white bat.
This has to be the most adorable bat in the entire world. Covered in fluffy white fur, their colonies look like a bunch of snowballs.
Oh, and they’re also called tent-making bats because they hang leaves from branches to build shared little houses for themselves and their friends. They’re just too cute.