Last month, the ruins of Tughlaqabad in Delhi served as a backdrop to a unique morning walk. A set of naturalists and researchers urged a group of walkers to look beyond the built heritage, lift their gaze up to the dark crevices and holes and explore the world of bats within. As part of another session that very week, at Sunder Nursery, a team from World Wide Fund for Nature-India with Rohit Chakravarty, bat researcher at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, got a group of people to spend the evening listening to and identifying bat calls, so that they could understand the behaviour and role of bats in the environment. Using bat detectors and acoustic devices, the participants listened to and interpreted bat vocalisations in real time.
These sessions opened up the eyes of city dwellers to bats, while breaking myths around them and making scientific information more accessible. Little did we know that Delhi’s monuments, gardens and parks are home to 15 species of bats, from tiny pipistrelles that sleep inside crevices in our homes, to the Flying Foxes often seen flying over Janpath, to the mouse-tailed bats that throng monuments. You will find them in dome cracks and abandoned chambers of heritage structures or in tiled roofs, open pipes and holes in the walls of buildings.
For most of us, bats are a phantasmic presence with dark wings that resemble “silken sleeves” to borrow a phrase from American poet Paisley Rekdal. Highly misunderstood animals, they have often been treated rather cruelly in literature and pop culture. D.H. Lawrence didn’t mince words while describing these nocturnal creatures in his poem, Bats: “Pipistrello! Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe. Little lumps that fly in air and have voices indefinite, wildly vindictive; Wings like bits of umbrella. Bats!” Added to that is the fearful association of bats and zoonotic diseases such as Nipah and covid-19. Many more such walks, open to anyone, are planned for the coming months by the organisers, WWF-India with Centre for Wildlife Studies in the hope of changing such perceptions. As Chakravarty says, “The fear and misunderstanding come because most people haven’t seen bats up close or learnt more about their behaviour.”
A recent nationwide assessment, State of India’s Bats, found that India is home to 135 species of bats, of which 16 are endemic to the country. Yet they are among the leaststudied mammals. “Despite their crucial roles in the ecosystem as seed dispersers, pollinators, and predators of pest insects, bats receive an insignificant amount of attention from the country’s research and conservation communities and scant recognition in government policies and programmes,” observed the report. The ones in urban areas get even less attention from researchers and the public alike. “Getting funding for bats is very tough, but we still try,” says Bengaluru-based Rajesh Puttaswamaiah, citizen scientist and trustee, Bat Conservation India Trust.
But what is the symbiotic relationship between bats and cities? A 2024 article published by Roundglass Sustain mentions that several fruit-eating bat species pollinate mahua (Madhuca longifolia), kapok or silk cotton (Ceiba pentandra), banana and jamun trees planted as garden/avenue trees in cities. Other trees in urban areas, like the cluster fig, false Ashoka, guava, Singapore cherry, banyan, and peepal, benefit from the bats’ seed dispersal services. “Insectivorous bats that roost in dark city buildings are voracious feeders, often consuming their body weight in insects in one single night, making them highly effective pest control agents,” the article notes.
Citizen scientists such as Puttaswamaiah have recorded about 17 species of bats across Bengaluru, of which three are frugivorous such as the short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx) and 14 are insectivorous bats. The fruit bats usually pick nightly roosts under window shades, overhangs, or tree branches and carry their food to these spots to feed. The research in the city also looks at the impact of urban lighting and noises on the bat activity. Insect-feeding bats such as the pipistrelles are attracted to the light. ”Pipistrelles primarily feed on mosquitos, thereby helping in prevention of mosquito-borne diseases,” says Puttaswamaiah. “However, they also end up entering houses while chasing insects, causing panic to residents.” Fear of zoonotic diseases also lead to “revenge killings” or people smoking bats out of their roosts.
In Bengaluru, Puttaswamaiah has observed that it is the public sector campuses, defence campuses and a few large parks where bats can roost and survive in the urban landscape. “The dwindling lakes and loss of green cover are impacting access to fresh water, roosting spaces and foraging sites, thus impacting their survival,” he says. In Delhi, the matter is a little more complicated as a large number of insectivorous bat species has found refuge in monuments. In the past, there have been sporadic attempts to remove them. “While the monuments are protected by law, the bats living within them are not. A lot of our research is about looking at the habitat, the food they consume and the threats to these urban species, which emerge from the monuments to consume insects from fields and green areas of Delhi and help agriculture and pest control,” says Chakravarty.
It would help if the public became a lot more invested in the conservation of bat species in the cities. To achieve this, the WWF-India with Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), CWS, and Bat Conservation International have come up with a pocket field guide, which documents 12 out of the 15 bat species in the National Capital Region. An easy-to-use reference, it includes identification markers of species, their habitat, diet and behaviour There are also some interesting facts—bats see through ears, using echolocation; many insectivorous bats can detect objects as thin as a spider’s web in total darkness, allowing them to navigate complex forests and hunt tiny gnats in mid-air. An important section is on “myths vs facts”, which break popularly held notions that bats are bloodthirsty or that they are harbingers of bad luck.
Chakravarty calls the pamphlet a “cyclical process”—and an ongoing one— with studies taking place on bats in monuments. These are yielding scientific information that can be put out in the form of pamphlets to get citizens interested in further contributing to the growth of data. According to Nikhil John, assistant manager, Nature Connect, Environment Education programme, WWF-India, such materials help build a culture of citizen scientists and an aware public, which will go a long way in contributing to research and biodiversity conservation as well. “Environment education creates interesting emotional connections as well. Public participation can help record roosting sites, seasonal activities, habitat use across urban landscapes,” he says.
The organisation is in the process of coming up with a long-term volunteer monitoring project as well. So far, one of the challenges in bat conservation programmes has been the limitation of resource people. John shares a case in point: “Not a lot of people were aware of the role that dragonflies play especially in northern India. But with multiple conversations taking place over time, now you have guides and locals, who are in turn sensitising others,” he says. “We want to do the same with bats by creating a pool of young people who can lead trails in future.”