What do wildlife rehabilitators do with bats?

Bat Injuries

Bats are incredibly small and light animals, with many weighing under 20 grams. That means they're incredibly fragile and can easily be hurt if they fall out of a tree or have a similar mishap.

When this happens, it's important to get a wildlife rehabilitator on the scene immediately. That's because bats have a high metabolism and need to constantly be eating, so being unable to hunt for a night due to injury can negatively affect their health and lead to starvation.

Who Are Wildlife Rehabilitators?

Wildlife rehabilitators are a group of experts who want to help animals. These are professionals with a deep knowledge of the animal species, allowing them to take better care of the animal than other people.

These experts are also often licensed, as they must follow the laws of the state they're in. This often means they'll have an easier time catching and relocating the animal since their permits allow them to.

Taking Care of a Bat

Wildlife rehabilitators have to take care of a lot of injured bats. This can be a dangerous task since bats can infect them with rabies and other diseases, but these experts know exactly what to do.

Feeding the Bat

A large part of their work surrounds feeding the bat. Since the animal is too injured to hunt for insects itself, the rehabilitators bring the bat food every couple of hours. This often includes feeding the animal mealworms.

Sometimes, when taking care of baby bats, wildlife rehabilitators might feed the child goat's milk to speed up its development. This allows the animal to grow stronger bones and to become independent.

Healing the Bat

Wildlife rehabilitators spend a good portion of their time healing the animal.

The bat might have some minor injuries that the rehabilitator can take care of on their own. Or the animal might be in a more severe situation, at which point the caretaker will visit a veterinary clinic to fix up the animal.

Releasing the Bat

The whole point of rehabilitation is to nurse the animal until it's healthy and can go back into the wild. That's why wildlife rehabilitators will spend a few weeks or months caring for the animal and tending to any of its wounds until it's able to take care of itself again.

Once that happens, they'll carefully release it back into the wild so that it can rejoin its colony and go on with its life.

This also applies to baby bats, as the rehabilitator raises them until they're able to fly and hunt on their own before releasing them back into the wild.

Euthanizing the Bat

In some very rare cases, the bat is going to be in a lot of pain and the expert won't be able to fix the issue. Unfortunately, the rehabilitator will have no choice but to humanely euthanize the bat, so it doesn't experience any extra suffering.

It's an unfortunate part of the job, but it does happen.

Bat Rehabilitators Versus Bat Removal

It's common to mistake bat rehabilitators with bat removal experts. Both titles sound similar, but the jobs are drastically different.

Bat rehabilitators are there to take care of an injured animal. They will not remove a bat infestation or trap the animals.

And vice versa, bat removal experts are concerned with removing bat infestations from your home or business. They often use exclusion techniques to remove the animal. They do not, however, take care of injured or baby bats.

That's why you should call a bat removal expert if you have an infestation on your hands, and you should call a rehabilitator if you find an injured or abandoned bat in or around your home.