Batmania!
They're eerie, possibly imperiled, and utterly amazing. And New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns is the best place in the world to see them.THE BATS ARE NOT COOPERATING. A half-mile inside Carlsbad Caverns, hundreds of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats are taking their time before emerging for a night of gorging on insects across the Pecos River Valley.
"Okay, bats, what are you going to do tonight?" asks Pam Cox, chief interpretive ranger at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. She is getting nervous as our vigil nears the two-hour mark. We're staked out at the park's Bat Flight Amphitheater, a terraced set of stone benches that looks down toward the proscenium-like opening of the caverns. It is to bat flight what the Hollywood Bowl is to summer concerts.
The night before, the bats emerged around 7:30. But as the clock moves toward 8, Cox explains that it's impossible to predict the time of departure. There's no single cue that the bats respond to, neither changes in barometric pressure nor the dimming of the day, which is undetectable in the complete darkness of the bats' subterranean sanctuary. Cox has sometimes noticed the cascading call of a canyon wren just before the bats take flight but has no idea whether there's any connection. Some nights, the bats may not come out at all.
Cox is a self-confessed "bat geek," having first cultivated her obsession with these creatures during 14 years working at Phantom Ranch along the Colorado River, deep inside Grand Canyon National Park. It began the day when researchers came down the Colorado to net bats and caught a pregnant pallid bat. "They let me feel her little tummy," Cox coos. "And just looking at that face! Even though pallid bats are all like, 'Aaarrgh!!!'"
At that point. Cox's easy smile briefly contorts into a horrific snarl to approximate the demeanor of these big-eared, badass bats (they feed on scorpions) before her face relaxes and she continues. "Yeah, they're actually really nasty little bats. But it was so neat to see a bat close up. I just fell in love with them. Now--I really am such a geek--I keep a jar of bat guano in my office."
Most people assume that all bats are nasty little bats. These creatures of the dark occupy a phobic niche deep in the human psyche along with sharks, spiders, and snakes. Nor is it surprising why. Bats are the only mammals capable of sustained flight. They superficially resemble rodents with wings, so the "flying rats" sobriquet, while inaccurate biologically, has stuck. And yes, three vampire bat species live off blood. So for a broad segment of humanity, the idea of a half-million bats taking flight is less primal spectacle than nightmare on the wing.
But bats are both diverse and misunderstood. "We really know so little about them," says Micaela Jemison of the advocacy organization Bat Conservation International. "Trying to study a flying animal is hard enough. Studying an animal that flies at night and often in large numbers is a whole other challenge."
WHAT WE DO KNOW is that there are 1,331 kinds of bats that constitute roughly 24 percent of all mammal species. They're highly adaptive creatures, living everywhere in the world except at the poles and on remote islands. Tied for second behind Texas, both New Mexico and Arizona have 28 species.
Bottom line: There are a whole lot of bats. But the only one I've seen so far today was a mummified little guy deep inside the caverns, hanging onto a ledge with what turned out to be his death grip.
Although 16 other kinds of bats live in the park, Brazilian (also known as Mexican) free-taileds are the species synonymous with Carlsbad Caverns. They're even central to the legend of the caverns' 1898 discovery.
Earlier in the day, I had taken the park's Lower Cavern Tour, an exploration beyond developed areas and into sections of the 30-mile system accessible by ladder, rope, and a bit of wriggling and crawling through pas sages. At one point, the ranger shined a light on a formation to reveal the inscription: "J White, 1898."
In 1898, James Larkin White was a 16-year-old cowboy riding through New Mexico's Chihuahuan Desert when he noticed something he couldn't comprehend. White later wrote, "During my life on the range I'd seen plenty of prairie whirlwinds--but, this thing didn't move; it remained in one spot, spinning its way upward ... I worked my way through the rocks and brush until I found myself gazing into the biggest and blackest hole I had ever seen, out of which the bats seemed literally to boil." White surmised that all those bats probably needed a mighty big cave and soon began his descents into Carlsbad Caverns.
THERE ARE LARGER CAVE SYSTEMS in the world than Carlsbad and caves with more bats too. Bracken Cave near San Antonio has 20 million of the animals, and what may be a million bats coming out of a roost in Mexico outside El Paso, Texas, routinely shows up on National Weather Service satellite images as cloud cover.
Bat scientist Nickolay Hristov, design researcher with the Center for Design Innovation and an assistant professor of biological sciences at Winston-Salem State . University, says what distinguishes Carlsbad Caverns from other bat caves is its depth, length, and complexity.
"Carlsbad Caverns is like nothing else," he says. "It's enormous, and the sheer size means that there's a huge area between the formal end of the roost and where the natural entrance is. The bats have to traverse a really long corridor, and you're surrounded by the darkness as they fly in and out. You can be an observer of their movement within the cave."
Hristov grew up in southern Bulgaria's Rhodope Mountains, the son of geologists who he said "introduced me to the world outside of concrete and asphalt." He found twin passions: biology and photography. After coming to the United States to study zoology at The University of Maine, a research opportunity fell through and Hristov found himself working a job in the campus cafeteria. He then noticed a sign for a bat project at nearby Acadia National Park. "I didn't have strong feelings one way or another about bats," he says. "Bats are tiny, they live in the dark, and they're close to impossible to photograph. But it was a moment of desperation. And I didn't want to do dishes."
The bat roost is a remarkably harsh place in which to work for Hristov and the teams of students and collaborators (including wife and fellow bat researcher Louise Allen), who have to haul in and operate a half-million dollars of scientific instrumentation. "By almost all physiological standards, it's hostile and miserable," he says. "Incredibly disgusting yet utterly fascinating."
There's ammonia and carbon dioxide, poop and pee, and lots of decomposition, he says. Weird insects and parasites crawl up researchers' legs from the 33-yard-deep layer of guano. Pam Cox, enthralled by the utter weirdness of the bat cave during a visit, recalls walking around while looking through an infrared camera. "I'm recording and thinking, So cool, so cool. Then I tripped and went face down into the guano. It's all on video and the camera gets buried. But it's amazing in there."
Hristov's work has helped reveal the bats' world. Using thermal imaging cameras, he created videos that show the bat roost as a place not of silent, slumbering bats but of constant activity. He created a fly-through, 3-D reconstruction of the caverns, and in another video, the bats, illuminated as heat signatures, race through the void, glowing like thousands of mini comets. A video shot at 1,000 frames per second captures the animals flying out through the cavern opening, every flap of their wings visible in a way the thousands of visitors who come to the Bat Flight Amphitheater every summer could hardly imagine.
For Hristov and Cox, these images and ongoing research present a unique opportunity to educate the public about bats. Often, Cox says, interpretive rangers don't know about the latest studies that scientists are conducting in parks. Carlsbad Caverns National Park is the first location of a pilot program started by Hristov, Allen, and Martha Merson called iSWOOP (Interpreters and Scientists Working on Our Parks), which is designed to bridge the gap between visitors and scientists.
Although Hristov believes there's been a shift in attitudes and a greater acceptance of bats over the past 10 to IS years, age-old misconceptions endure. Bat Conservation International reports that habitat loss remains a huge problem and colonies are routinely destroyed, even though bats play a key role in controlling insect populations. Cox says the Brazilian free-tailed bats, for example, can eat up to half their body weight each night, with a special fondness for corn-ear worm moths, an agricultural pest whose larvae destroy crops. That's tons of bugs every night.
Nor are they the only beneficial bats. Fruit-eating bats promote the regeneration of forests by spreading seeds over long distances. And if you like margaritas, be sure to raise a toast to long-nosed bats. They're a primary pollinator of century plants. the agave from which tequila is made. No bats, no agaves. No agaves, no tequila.
"Bats are some of the most unique animals in the world," says Micaela Jemison. "There are bats that hunt fish and bats that can eat spiders out of a web without breaking it. Bats have made the most out of virtually all of the environments on Earth. To lose bats, we would lose a vital part of so many different ecosystems."
Here at Carlsbad, park visitors learn about a threat to North America's bat populations. When I checked in for the cavern tour, the ranger asked whether I had visited any other caves over the past couple of years. White-nose syndrome has ravaged bat populations in at least 26 states and Canada, killing entire colonies in some cases. Discovered in 2006, the fungus is spread bat-to-bat in hibernating populations and by humans moving between caves. Bats awaken more frequently, which uses up precious fat reserves, and the disease sometimes causes the animals to emerge prematurely during winter, leading to death by starvation or cold.
In May, the fungus was found in Oklahoma, its westernmost extent to date. So far, Carlsbad Caverns has been spared. But the park is taking no chances: Clothing and shoes known to have been in areas with white-nose syndrome are not permitted without proper cleaning.
LIKE ANY HEADLINER, the bats have an opening act, and Cox and I watch cave swallows swoop around the cavern opening, nabbing bugs out of the air. Cox says the swallows, seeming to anticipate the bats' exit, often stop flying and go quiet not long before the emergence. So we wait, hoping to detect changes in the swallows' behavior and any signs of bats emerging from their underground lair.
The caverns are a contradictory place. Caustic sulfuric acid first carved out the chambers. Then water, a drop at a time, began to craft the stalactites, stalagmites, and drapery-like formations, creating a gothic grandeur that belies just how alien this environment hundreds of feet deep in the earth truly is. In the darkness, there are zombie crickets controlled by parasitic worms. And when bat pups fall from the ceiling, beetles swarm from the guano and eat them to the bone.
"Mommy and Me" this isn't: After the bats give birth to a single pup, the babies remain clustered in a section of the roost separate from their moms, packed in at more than 400 animals per square foot. But by using scent and sound, the mother bats are able to locate their pups for feedings. The rock seems alive, says Hristov. "It's almost like there's a super-organism above you."
Finally I catch some movement near the cavern opening. There's no sudden burst out of the cave. Instead, bats begin to rise from the opening in a tight spiral. Hristov had explained that Carlsbad is like a large crater, and while bats are skilled long-distance flyers, covering 50 miles in a night and able to reach speeds up to 60 mph with a good tailwind, their long skinny wings also mean that they can't fly straight up. Gaining elevation bums up a lot of energy.
Soon more and more animals swirl from the opening. Bats are everywhere, filling the air above our heads with no discernible pattern to their flight. It's all strangely silent. Their vocalizations are at a register beyond our ability to hear, so the only noise is thousands of flapping wings that together sound like a soft rain on a summer night. Their moving bodies and translucent wings create a living scrim that filters the remaining sunlight. The bats are also near enough that we smell them, a surprising sweetness mingling in their earthy scent.
Cox and I say nothing as the bats surge from the cavern, a few flying so close that we feel the rush of beating wings. Occasionally I try to follow a single bat, which is possible, at least briefly, before it's absorbed by the multitudes as the animals organize themselves into what look like dark streams flowing into the sunset sky.
It takes 40 minutes before the last bats leave the cave for the New Mexico night. I'll be back before dawn for their return.
SEEING THE BATS
GETTING THERE
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is 300 miles southeast of Albuquerque and 150 miles northeast of El Paso. The closest lodging and dining is in White's City, 7 miles from the visitor center. $10; nps.gov/cave.
BAT VIEWING
Every night from Memorial Day through late October, the park's Bat Flight Program takes place in the outdoor amphitheater, where rangers give talks on bat flight, reproduction, and echolocation. The schedule varies depending on time of sunset; check ahead, nps.gov/cave.
OTHER OUTINGS
The ranger-led Lower Cave Tour ($20) is a three-hour adventure that leads into sections of the caverns away from crowds and requires descents using a rope and several ladders. Reserve at (877) 444-6777 or recreation.gov.
For a better sense of the opening from which the bats emerge, hike into the caverns on the 1.25-mile Natural Entrance Self-Guided Tour, which descends 750 feet.
DIGITAL BONUS More places to watch wildlife around the West: sunset, com/wildlife.
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| Title Annotation: | WANDERLUST; bats in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, United States |
|---|---|
| Author: | Jaffe, Matthew |
| Publication: | Sunset |
| Article Type: | Travel narrative |
| Date: | Sep 1, 2015 |
| Words: | 2392 |
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