Bats:  Flying Insect Pest Control For Your Community

Did you know that the average bat can eat about 300 mosquitoes per hour?  That makes bats the best natural insect pest control that your community can ever get.

Bats:  Flying Insect Pest Control For Your Community

We need to do all we can to protect all bat species because most of them are endangered. 

However, most of the reasons bats are endangered is due to easily fixable solutions – such as not killing a bat if you discover one or more is roosting in your belfry.  In time, you will find that they make very inexpensive and effective flying insect pest control.

Are Bats Creepy?

All species of bats got painted with a bad broad brush when the movie "Dracula" came out in 1932.  People began to think of all bats as attacking people and feeding on freshly drawn blood.  Actually, the only species of bat that eats blood is the vampire bat in South America, and they drink only a tiny bit per night. 

Otherwise, bats are only creepy to bugs, making them a great flying insect pest control.

What kind of bugs do bat eat?  Many species eat mosquitoes, flies, moths, crickets, worms, beetles and whatever else they can get a hold of.  A species called the pallid bat can even eat scorpions and centipedes.

Since these flying insect pest control flocks travel by sonar rather than light, they can swoop down on the most unsuspecting of insects which usually come out in the dark. 

What You Can Do

There are a couple of things that you can do to encourage bats to set up shop in your neighborhood and become the local flying insect pest control team.  You can support legislation that helps bats. 

You can educate your children and your family not to be afraid of bats.  And you can set up a bat box in your yard.  This is very much like a bird house and can often be found wherever good bird houses are sold.

You can also not use harsh man-made insecticides and fertilizers in your home and garden.  Although these poisons kill bugs, they can also kill bats that eat the bugs.  And you can also refuse to lay down any poison bait for rodents. 

This bait often gets eaten by birds and other species that you didn’t mean to poison.  Any poisoned bugs eating the bait and then getting chomped down by a bat will also poison the bat acting as your flying insect pest control.