Baby Bat Emergency
It was a bat emergency in Bakersfield!
WildCare's Director of Animal Care, Melanie Piazza received a call on Saturday morning that hundreds of baby Mexican Free-tailed bats had fallen from their roost under a freeway overpass. The temperatures in Bakersfield reached 118 last weekend, and baby bats were tumbling onto the sweltering concrete.
Someone had spotted the many fallen baby bats on the ground and alerted wildlife rescuers in that area. There are only two independent rehabilitators able to care for bats in that region, and no wildlife hospital like WildCare. This emergency was far more than they could handle alone.
They put out the call for assistance to wildlife care centers across California, including WildCare.
The photos below show the roost, located in the cracks of the freeway underpass, and the baby bats on the ground before they were rescued.
With the help of dedicated Foster Care Volunteer Rachel Griffiths, Melanie swung into action, sending an urgent email to WildCare's Volunteer Team asking for people with confirmed rabies vaccinations and experience with bats to prepare for a large intake. Meanwhile, she scheduled a Transport Volunteer to make the 4+ hour drive to Bakersfield.
The driver returned with 50 dehydrated and stressed baby bats in a large mesh tent. Unfortunately, three of the bats needed to be euthanized due to badly broken wings, but 47 of them were comparatively healthy. Now the real work began!
Each tiny bat needed to be weighed (they weigh between 3 and 8 grams each), examined and rehydrated with subcutaneous fluids (a challenge with an animal this small!), and started on the specialized formula our team uses for baby bats.
In the video below you can see a time-lapse video of the intake of these 50 baby bats.
Because their mouths are so small, feeding baby Mexican Free-tailed Bats from a nipple is impossible. Instead, we drip the formula onto a clean makeup sponge (usually an eye-shadow applicator) and the baby bat sucks the formula from the sponge. With feedings every four hours, and volunteers having between four and ten baby bats in their care, you can imagine how much time and commitment this takes!
Watch the video below of one of our baby bats being fed.
Mexican Free-tailed Bats are incredibly social creatures, and they roost in huge colonies. Baby bats cling to their mother's body as she hangs upside down, nursing when they want to, and otherwise cuddling close. A massive heat wave can increase the temperature in a roost to intolerable levels, which causes the baby bats to let go of their mothers and fall to the ground.
The bat expert in Bakersfield writes that this particular roost, under a freeway overpass on State Route Highway SR-178, is of concern every year due to its location and the heat. Last year the worst heatwave of the summer came slightly later, and the bats that fell were at the age when they are beginning to fly on their own. Most were able to fly themselves back up to the roost in 2023.
But this year is particularly horrific because the baby bats are still nursing and they're too young to fly. Also, the temperatures have been so very high and for such long duration — there were more than two weeks of temperatures between 110 and 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Rescuers estimate that thousands of baby bats have fallen, and many have perished.
The 47 baby bats in care at WildCare, however, have made an excellent recovery, and as their bodies return to normal hydration levels and their appetites improve, the charismatic and delightful personalities of these little bats are revealing themselves.
In the video below, you can see Foster Care Team member Kate Lynch returning her babies to their special container. One of the little bats, a feisty male, has decided that he is not yet ready to relinquish the makeup sponge used for feeding. Kate lets him keep it, in part because of the risk of breaking his tiny teeth by pulling the sponge out of his mouth. Eventually he will tire of holding onto it, and she can collect it again at the next feeding. She says he often holds onto the sponge. In comparison, Kate says one of her female babies is shy and fussy about eating. That baby is always the one most likely to spit out the feeding sponge if something (a sound, a shadow) makes her nervous. Her other female bat lets out an excited chirp every time she grabs the sponge to eat! The fourth bat, a male is always the best eater, and he will often roll around to get the formula from all angles.
Bats, of course, hang upside down, and the baby bats are accustomed to feeling something soft against their velvety-furred bodies. A soft dishcloth pinned to the top of the container offers a cozy curtain with lots of enticing folds for the little bats to roost in. A damp sponge keeps the air slightly moist. They are fed every four hours, with an eight-hour break for sleeping, and their foster care providers will also teach them to eat mealworms out of a dish. They will remain in foster care for about three weeks, after which they'll spend a couple of weeks practicing their flying skills in a tented aviary.
When they're ready, they will make the return trip to Bakersfield to be released back with their colony.
Help WildCare care for these orphaned baby bats and all of the wildlife patients arriving at our doors this hot July!