Mammals’ body temperature is a result of burning energy, which is in turn connected to your metabolic rate. In fact, while it may seem like sleep to the naked eye, hibernation involves shutting down an animal’s body to a far greater extent. This isn’t as simple as sleeping away the snowier temperatures, however. If bats are unable or unwilling to travel so far for the winter, however, they can simply hunker down for a long hard winter by hibernating. Gray bats get the prize for traveling the longest distances for their migrations – not quite “ 500 Miles” but a still-impressive 100 to 200 miles, with the record held by colonies traveling 325 miles. Several other bat species do this as well, choosing the safety of numbers over going it alone come wintertime. What’s more, given the “little” part of their name, you might think these bats might be easy prey while flying south for the winter on their own, and you would be right – which is why they don’t go it alone but fly as a colony. Little brown bats migrate southward and then choose to migrate for some of the winter as well. That said, as alluded to above, asking “do bats migrate?” versus “do bats hibernate?” is not an either/or dichotomy when it comes to most bats, and that’s certainly the case for this bat breed and those like them. To take another example, the little brown bat, another common bat across North America, also travels south for the winter. In addition, when the weather gets cold the bugs get scarce, and given the fact that most bats feast primarily on insectoid buffets, and that those who don’t instead rely primarily on fruits – which also die off with the winter frost – those are yet more reasons for bats to leave for southerly warmer climes.įor example, Mexican free-tailed bats – which are the most common bats in Texas – to silver-haired bats in Washington State choose to get their Frank Sinatra on “ South of the Border” and indeed fly “Down Mexico Way.” In fact, silver-haired bats are found all across North America, but wherever they live, they typically choose to fly south for the winter, so if they don’t wind up in Mexico they might be “ California Dreamin’” or chilling in the Florida Keys. ![]() Migratory Batsīats may be little fuzzballs, but they clearly don’t have the heavy fur necessary to ride out the cold temperatures of winter, which is a major reason why they migrate. ![]() With that in mind, let’s answer the eternal question of “where do bats go in the winter?” by taking a closer look at hibernation and migration. It’s less of a “Pizza or Chinese food tonight?”-style “choice” bats make than it is them simply deciding based on stimuli, survival instincts, and what suits them best at the moment. Of course, “choose” might imply a stronger degree of decision making than is actually present.
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