Cave Bats

Arizona State Parks

There's much more to bats than spooky movies and Halloween decorations. These half-ounce flyers are heavyweights when it comes to consuming insects, eating up to one half of their body weight each night.

Around 1,000 female cave bats use the Big Room at Kartchner Caverns for a maternity ward. Pregnant myotis velifer females return to the cave each April where they give birth to a single pup in late June. The babies remain in the roost each evening while their mothers forage for insects in the surrounding countryside. By early August, the young bats are flying and have joined their mothers in feeding outside the cave each night. Mothers and their offspring leave the nursery in mid-September to begin their migration to their winter hibernation roost.

Bat guano is the main source of food for all sorts of tiny invertebrates that live in the cave. To preserve the fragile ecosystem of Kartchner, the Big Room is closed for tours when the bats are using it. For more information, call 520-586-CAVE.