Bats receive a bad press but they are amazing creatures, which have an important role to play in our ecosystem.

Baby bats are called pups

The average size of a litter is just one.

The collective name for a group of bats is a colony

Bats are native to all continents except the Artic

Our most common bat is the pipistrelle which at 5g weighs less than a 2p coin and is only 4cm long

Not all bats hibernate during the winter - some migrate to warmer climates

Bats can live for up to 30 years

A pipistrelle bat can eat up to 3,000 insects in one night

The UK has 17 species of resident bats (and a few other vagrant species) - which is more than a quarter of our mammal species.

There are 1,100 species of bat throughout the world

Bats have amazing echolocation skills - they will not get caught up in your hair

Another myth is that bats have poor eyesight or are blind - this is not true. Bats have very good eyesight but their colour vision is restricted to shades of grey.

Frog eating bats can distinguish between an edible and an inedible (poisonous) frog by simply listening in on the mating calls of the male frog.

Bats are important for helping to maintain the ecosystem. Bananas, mangoes, cashew and dates, to name but a few plants are dependent on bats for the process of pollination.

Echolocation Fact:- Bats have developed the use of echolocation when navigating and hunting for food at night. Bats make high-frequency sounds, and the echoes of these sounds bounce back, which enables a bat to make a mental map. Using this map they are able to avoid the smallest of obstacles whilst locating their prey. In just a split second Echolocation enables bats to determine the size of objects, their location, how fast they are travelling and even their texture!