500,000 bats call home the world’s largest occupied bat house at the University of Florida

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – university Florida’s The campus is home to the world’s largest occupied bat houses. Two large houses on Museum Road in Gainesville are home to approximately 500,000 bats.

You can witness all this about fifteen minutes after sunset every evening. bats They leave the house at night to feed.

“You’ll see literally hundreds of thousands of bats streaming out of the bat houses,” said Verity Mathis, Ph.D., director of the UF Breast Science Collection. “They make these spirals come out. It’s a really impressive place.”

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You can see bats emerging all year round, but they are most active in spring and summer. The only thing that will prevent them from going out at night is rain.

A common bat can eat its weight in mosquitoes in one night, Mathis said.

“They will go out looking for bugs all over Gainesville at night,” Mathis said. “They provide pest management services.”

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Many people in town said they would encounter far fewer mosquito bites while wandering around campus at night than in other parts of Florida.

Click here For more information on bat houses.

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