Bats: The Facts And The Myths

There are many myths revolving around bats. One of them is a false belief that they are blind.
Most of bats are nocturnal creatures and many use echolocation to track their prey, but that does not mean that they are blind. In reality, none of the known bats are blind. With an exception of microbats that have poor eyesight, many bats have vision as good as rats. Species of megabats (or fruit bats) have sight as good as humans, if not better.
Even the microbats have vision good enough to fly long distances beyond the reach of echolocation and have great night vision. Echolocation can only be used to track moving objects (such as insects) so microbats use their sight to avoid obstacles, for altitude measurement and for landmark recognition.
The fruit bats, for example, do not use echolocation but completely rely on their well developed eyesight. Bats also have very well developed senses of smell and hearing.

[Fruit bat. Picture Source]

The "blindness" myth is quite harmless in comparison to other myths that have given them a bad reputation such as one about bats sucking up animal or human blood. Majority of bats only consume insects (about 70%), while majority of the remaining species feed on fruits. Only three species called vampire bats feed on animal blood and have been reported to bite people. They never do suck up blood but use similar feeding method to the mosquito. They make a tiny bite, lick off few drops of blood while using their saliva's anti-clotting enzyme to keep the blood flowing.

[Vampire bat. Picture Source]

The studies on bats have proven that they are an important part of tropical forest ecosystems, as well as many ecosystems in Europe, Asia or Africa. They are responsible for pollination and seed dispersal of hundreds of species of plants and flowers, that entirely depend on them. Because of their insect pest hunting skills, they can contribute to the decrease in usage of pesticides. Some people even build bat houses (or bat boxes) in their gardens or close to the crops to use these animals as a natural way of fighting insect pests.

[Bat house. Picture Source]