Bats are fascinating members of the order Chiroptera. They even exceed rodents in abundance. It's unfortunate that bats have such negative connotations and superstitions associated with them for if it weren't for their pollination, we may never have had balsa wood, bananas, plantains, or peaches. Bats are certainly more effective in insect capture than the energy-draining and noisy "bug zappers" hung on porches that seem to draw insects from a tri-county area right into your front yard. Truly, a gray bat can effectively vacuum up 8,000 insects per night — just one more reason to construct a "bat box."

Where did bats come from? "All bats alive today descend from a common ancestor that could fly"¹ says evolutionism. But as far as real observational evidence is concerned, this statement — and statements like it — is based on faith. The same article in Discover admits, "The genealogy [i.e., evolutionary ancestry] of bats is a murky matter, though, and has inspired some pretty exotic ideas"² and ". . . bats pose one of evolution's supreme puzzles."³ Notice that secular science cannot provide an answer to bat origin and therefore one's imagination must take over, ". . . you can craft all sorts of plausible scenarios for how bats came to be."⁴ Regardless, evolutionists maintain that bats evolved from small, non-flying mammals, even though, "There are no known intermediate stages between bats and insectivores."⁵

Creation scientists claim God created bats as bats and they are testimony to His creative hand (Romans 1:20). One of the especially designed features of bats is their amazing sonar. Bats send out a pulse at 100,000 cycles per second — or hertz (Hz) that, within just a fraction of a second, can drop down to 30,000 Hz (In comparison, the upper limit for human hearing is 20,000 Hz). Bats could very well deafen themselves if it weren't for a special muscle the Creator placed in their middle ear. It contracts rapidly to "freeze" the bone associated with hearing as the impulse is sent out — but relaxes just in time to receive the echoes of previous impulses.

How effective is this sonar? It is quite likely that bats can mentally "sense" with their ultrasonic sonar pulses as well as you and I can see with our eyes!⁶ Rather than acknowledging such sophistication as due to the Creator's hand, secularists rob God of the glory by saying, "Frequency-modulated pulses appear to have evolved in bat echolocation because the wide range of frequencies makes them suitable for target description and accurate ranging" (my emphasis).⁷

Creation scientists would say, "Christ created the bat's ability to produce frequency-modulated pulses because the wide range of frequencies makes them suitable for target description and accurate ranging." But our research doesn't stop there — it begins there! Creation scientists attempt to "think God's thoughts after Him" and research continues.

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1. Discover, November, 1998, p. 114.
2. Ibid., p. 114.
3. Ibid., p. 112.
4. Ibid., p. 114.
5. Colbert, Evolution of the Vertebrates, 2001, p. 333.
6. Hickman, Roberts & Larson, Zoology, W.C. Brown, 1997, p. 611.
7. Simmons & Young, Nerve Cells & Animal Behaviour, Cambridge U. Press, 1999, pp. 144-45.

Cite this article: Sherwin, F. 2003. Bat-tastic Bats. Acts & Facts. 32 (10).